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Letters from
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LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA

LETTERS

FROM SOUTH AFRICA

BY

&ije STimes special correspondent

Reprinted from Wfyz Qlimzft

of July, August, September, and October 1892

Hontfott

MACMILLAN AND CO.

AND NEW YORK
AND Wi)t mmtZ OFFICE, PRINTING HOUSE SQUARE

1893
&.

A II rights reserved

<4>„(jfo

THESE Letters are reprinted as they originally ap-
peared in the columns of The Times, at the request
of several of the most prominent public men in South
Africa, who, though representing various shades of
political opinion, unite in saying that the situation as
it exists at present is faithfully reflected in these
pages, and in expressing a wish that the general
public should by their republication have the oppor-
tunity of becoming better acquainted with South
African affairs.

The Times Office, Printing House Square,
London, January 1893.

KlMBERLEY.

Up to the Karoo ! It means up from Cape Town,
which is on the level of the sea, to a plateau top-
ping the summit of Table Mountain, and maintaining
throughout the extent of half a continent an eleva-
tion of from 3000 to 6000 feet. The principal climb
is done in the first twelve hours of a railway journey.
A train leaves Cape Town at nine in the evening.
Through the night the traveller, struggling with a
first experience of railway beds, which he afterwards
learns to regard as quite sufficiently comfortable for
sleeping purposes, hears the almost human groan and
strain of the engine as it toils up the heavy way.
There is even a point at which his dreams fill them-
selves with a futile sense of pushing. The slow
pace, the many stoppages, the sound of voices into
the cause of which he is scarcely awake enough to
inquire, combine to convey the impression that every
official and servant of the road is lending muscle to
assist the locomotive. An attempt to remove the
baize with which the window is blinded for the night
reveals nothing but outer darkness. In the morning
he learns that he was in fact pushed by a second
engine up the ascent of the Hex River Pass, where

B

2 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 1

the gradient is I in 40 for 5 miles, and he wakes
to find himself upon the Karoo.

The effect is magical. The world of trees and
towns has been left behind ; he is up in the country
of the mountain -tops. On all sides they stretch
away, peak behind peak, and range behind range, in
every variety of shape and colour, from the clear
browns and purples of the near foreground to the
liquid blues and melting heliotrope and primrose of
the horizon. There is no sign of habitation, and
scarcely, at first, of animal life. The ground is
covered with a gray-green scrub, of which the mono-
tony is broken only here and there by a clump of
mimosa bushes wearing their long white thorns like
flowers, or by the sheer barrenness of patches of red
shingle.

But at this season of the year it is probable that
there has been a good deal of rain. The water is
standing in pools and natural depressions, and the
hues of the sunrise reflected in it give a colour to
the whole scene which is indescribable. The air is
keen, but so extraordinarily invigorating that you
gladly throw down the windows of the carriage and
let it play upon you without fear of cold. A sense
of lightness which calls back childish dreams of flight
possesses the body. The idea of reaching the distant
ranges by a direct progress from peak to peak has
not the patent impossibility that it would wear in
Piccadilly.

Meantime the sunlight spreads, and the exhilara-
tion produced by the fresh air finds more material
expression in a well-developed appetite for breakfast.
The train stops while this is gratified at Matjes-
Fontein, a little invalid settlement, where about a

i LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 3

dozen houses cluster round the station and hotel.
Here a health station has been established where
patients come to undergo the simple process of an
air cure. Throughout the Karoo the stopping-places
are all health stations, for while the soil in this part
of the great plateau has not yet been put to any
practical use, the air has been found to possess such
remarkable curative power for diseases of the chest
that people flock to it in increasing numbers year by
year.

The Karoo proper is bounded on the north by
the Roggeweld and Nieuweld mountains, and on the
south by the Great and Little Zwartzenbergen,
which run in almost straight lines east and west
for a couple of hundred miles. The course of the
railway lies from south-east to north-west, having
these ranges always in differing aspects on the
horizon, the offshoots from them advancing some-
times in outlying koppjes to the very rails, sometimes
receding to the ranks of the parent hills, and leaving
the desert to widen into monotonous sweeps of plain.
Overhead the sky has an intense clear blue, not
unbroken, but flecked like an English sky in some
of its best April days with dazzling white clouds.
There is nothing English to which the scene can be
compared. The nearest parallel is to be gained by
travelling on foot through the mountain -tops of
Wales. Then magnify the distances in the same
proportion as the pace of a train multiplies the rate
of pedestrian progress, and you get some conception
of the breadth and space. The immense size of the
African continent is for the first time presented
visibly to the mind. Through it all the train rushes
on, with the telegraph wire as a symbol of still

4 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA i

greater swiftness by its side, and from the window
of the train there is occasional opportunity to note
the very different progress of another form of
travelling.

From time to time we pass the white tented
cover of a wagon, in which it is probable that the
principal domestic provisions of some Dutch house-
holder are stored. The wagon is about 20 feet
long, brilliantly painted in red and green and yellow.
Its canvas roof shines like snow in the sun, and
perhaps as many as sixteen or eighteen oxen are
yoked by pairs in the team which draws it at a foot's
pace across the desert. The driver walks by the
side of his wheelers, the children of the family usually
lag a little behind ; and somewhere, not far, either
in front or behind, a herd of cattle are alternately
moving and grazing.

Oxen succeed in getting a living for themselves
from the inhospitable -looking scrub, and for this,
among other reasons, they are the preferred animals
for wagon-travelling. For this reason, also, when a
farmer moves he has no need to sell his cattle, but
prefers to take them with him. You speed past.
The slowly-moving party is hardly seen before it
has been left far behind, and there may be hours
again of solitude before any further sign of human
existence meets the eye. Occasionally it happens
that you pass a wretched hut set down in the centre
of the waste. The train may even be obliged to
slacken its pace in order to give time to clear the
line of a flock of goats, which tells you that the
desert has a native inhabitant who succeeds in
drawing some poor sustenance from the soil. But
he scarcely interests you.

I LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 5

The sense of travel in its positive sense, so
different from the mere negative withdrawal from
London, iias rilled you. Increasingly as the hours
pass by and the clear noonday light begins to
deepen into sunset, you realise that you are going
into new country, and your feeling of fellowship is
stirred for the man with the wagon, who, like your-
self, has felt the attraction that lies on the other
side of the Karoo. You, in your progressive
English fashion, must hurry as fast as steam and
electricity can take you. He, in his traditional
Dutch manner, is content to move on slowly day
by day. He calls his progress " trekking." You give
the name of travelling to yours. Each is alike
removed from the stationary condition of the goat-
herd in the hut Each has a distinct aim towards
which he is tending, and each, it strikes you, is for
the moment representative of a force at work upon
South Africa. The Dutchman is going to seek one
form of natural wealth. In his ultimate place of
settlement he desires to find pasturage for his cattle
and seed earth for his corn. Space is essential to
him, and space alone. He has no need to hurry, no
need to keep pace with modern inventions. Time
is on his side, and the patient process of the seasons
will bring his fortune almost without labour from
the soil.

The destination of the Englishman in his typical
character is one of the mining centres. He is going
to Kimberley or Johannesburg, or it may be to the
still unproved gold-fields of Mashonaland. He wants
profit, but he wants it quickly. He has no time to
seek it in leisurely fashion, behind slow-plodding
oxen, surrounded by his baby children and his

6 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA i

women. When the Dutch trekker is preparing to
" outspan " for the evening meal, the day's journey
finished only a few miles beyond the spot at which
he was seen at noon, the train has already reached
Beaufort West at the north-eastern extremity of this
section of the Karoo. A crowd of consumptive
invalids has come there, as at other places, to greet
the friends or the friends of friends who are passing
through, and before night closes we are hurrying on
over the Winterveldt to Kimberley.

In the morning the character of the landscape
has changed. We have crossed the Orange River,
the mountains have drawn back to the distant
horizon, and the plain, covered by rough scrubby
grass, has widened on every side. The air is frosty,
and we are glad of all our wraps, but by nine
o'clock, when we reach Kimberley Station, the sun
is already warm enough to produce the illusion of a
summer day. It is really mid-winter ; chrysanthe-
mums have all been cut down by the frost. Only
the hardier sorts of roses, geraniums, violets, and
autumn foliage linger still in the villa gardens, which
are springing up in English fashion round the town.
It has taken thirty - six hours to do 547 miles,
including the ascent from Cape Town, but the rail-
way arrangements are comfortable enough to render
the journey possible without too great fatigue, and
the day lies before any one who chooses to see the
diamond mines.

It is so impossible to speak of Kimberley without
speaking of the diamond mines that, at the risk of
repeating what has been told a thousand times be-
fore, I describe them as they were shown to me, with
all their dependencies of labour settlements. They

I LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 7

concentrate round them almost the entire life of Kim-
berley, and they illustrate some of the most interesting
questions which are connected with the development
of enterprise in South Africa. The most logical
way of seeing the process of extraction is to begin
underground and brave at once the slush and heat
and drip of the 800 feet level. Here, while you
splash, candle in hand, in the darkness, through
some two or three miles of labyrinthine passages,
you have time to realise the work which is being
done by the thousands of natives who are busy day
and night throughout a honeycombed depth of
1 1 00 feet in getting out the blue earth from its bed.
There is no reef The whole mass of the mine is
diamondiferous, the rich stuff descends apparently
to limitless depths, and all that has to be done is to
bring it to the surface in such a manner that gallery
shall still stand on gallery and allow of working
without danger of collapse. Above, below, on every
side you hear the sound of pick-and-rock drill and
rolling trucks. Black figures glue themselves against
the walls to let you pass.

The conditions of the scene combine to produce
a vivid impression of labour. The natives work
together in gangs of four, filling the trucks. Per-
spiration pearls over their naked bodies in some of the
hottest galleries, but they appear to labour without
distress. In the main galleries, which are admirably
ventilated, they are for the most part fully dressed.
They work either by time or task as they please,
their wages remaining the same in either case ; and
I was told that they often finish their allotted
number of trucks in two-thirds of the time which is
allowed. Seeing what they do and how easily they

8 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA i

do it, you can never doubt any more that the African
native is able to work, and to work well when he
chooses. The pleasanter processes of diamond-
mining begin when you follow the contents of the
trucks up to welcome daylight again, and see the
" blue," as it is familiarly called, laid out on the
floors. The " floors " are simply fields fenced round
with high wire fences, where the extracted rock is
spread out in beds of a certain thickness to pulverise
under the action of the air. The contents of the
trucks as they are emptied out run themselves into
long rows ; the colour of the stuff is almost identical
with the gray-purplish hue of winter cabbages at
home, and at first sight the flat and widespreading
floors might easily be mistaken for Essex cabbage
fields.

The process of pulverisation takes from four to
six months, according to the weather and the con-
dition of the rock, and it is assisted by operations of
watering and rolling, which add to the agricultural
illusion. The average yield of every load of blue is
one carat of diamonds, and as the average net profit
on a carat of diamonds is about 20s., the value of
the million loads, which I was told that I was look-
ing at in the extent of a couple of cabbage fields, is
not far from ;£ 1,000,000 sterling. As soon as the
blue is sufficiently pulverised it is taken to the wash-
ing machine, where, by means of an ingenious system
of water flowing over revolving pans, the lighter part
of the earth is washed away, while the heavier re-
mains in the bottom of the pans. By this process

99 per cent of the blue earth is got rid of, and of

100 loads which go into the washing machine only
one is saved to be sorted. The remaining 99, after

I. LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 9

passing through the various sieves and stages of the
washing machine, pour out in a state of liquid mud
at the bottom of the machine, and are carted away
by mechanical haulage to be emptied on the daily
increasing hillocks of diamond tailings, which, if
other records of the industry were to vanish, might
well puzzle future geologists to account for their
composition. The weight of diamonds keeps the
precious stones for the most part with the heavy
residue which has been saved.

It is, however, well known that a considerable
quantity of diamondiferous stuff escapes with the
tailings, and if any economical process of treating
them could be discovered, the mounds of apparently
water-worn rock which dot the neighbourhood would
suddenly acquire a new value. So far no practical
use for this waste earth has been discovered. The
one rich load to which the hundred raw loads have
been reduced in passing through the washing machine
was at one time sorted by hand. It is now subjected
to a further preliminary of washing and sorting in a
machine known as the pulsator. Here the diamond-
iferous stuff is passed under water over pulsating
screens, in which a double layer of leaden bullets
has been placed. The pulsating motion causes a
constant gentle shaking to be maintained, and as the
specific gravity of diamonds is greater than that of
lead, while the specific gravity of much of the waste
pebbly material is less, the effect is to shake the
diamonds to the bottom of the shot, while the waste
material remains above it, and is gradually washed
over the side of the screen by the running water.
The diamondiferous stuff is served into these wet
pans by means of a cylindrical sieve, which distributes

io LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA i

the finest from one end and the coarsest from the
other, with regulated gradations between, on the same
principle as the main sieve of an ordinary flour mill.

The whole process of mechanical sorting is based
upon the relative weight of the diamond to other
stones of the same size among which it is found,
and if the difference were as great as the difference
between the weight of gold and the mineral sub-
stances from which it is divided by washing there
would be little waste and much less hand labour.
As it is, many stones, such as garnets and others of
no value, of which the specific gravity is equal to
that of diamonds, are found in the diamondiferous
earth. These, of course, pass in the pulsator through
the bed, and when all has been done that can be
done by mechanical processes, the material which is
taken from the machine has still to be subjected to
the slow, uncertain, and costly process of hand sort-
ing, with all its temptations to dishonesty.

In the sorting room the first thing which strikes
you with surprise is to perceive that native convicts
are busy at the sorting tables. Almost all the
sentences at the convict station are inflicted for theft,
and the handling of uncounted diamonds seems the
last work upon which it would be desirable to em-
ploy convicted thieves. However, as a matter of
fact, it is found that the greater hold which it is
possible to have over a convict, and the greater
difficulty which they experience in being able either
to keep or to dispose of stolen diamonds in prison,
makes them really safer to employ than the average
free coloured labourer. They are trusted only with
the smaller -grained stuff, in which the smaller
diamonds are found.

I LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA n

More than this, after you have stood for some
time by one of the tables, where four men are
employed, you probably become aware of an in-
definite sensation of discomfort, and raising your
head you perceive that a white man, whose business
it is to watch the proceedings of every one below,
is seated upon a beam overhead. No one employed
can be sure at any moment that the eye of a
watcher is not upon him. The larger-grained stuff
is all sorted by trusted white men. The mass of
pebbles which the distribution of the cylindrical
sieve has already sorted according to size are carried
into this room in hand sieves and thrown in wet
heaps upon their respective tables, where every
sorter is provided with a flat metal slice and a little
covered tin pannikin into which each diamond as it
is found is dropped. With the metal slice a small
portion of the mass is scattered rapidly over the
table, inspected, and swept over the side.

The rapidity with which a practised sorter is
able to detect a diamond or decide upon the absence
of any in the portion scattered is astonishing to the
amateur beholder, who can hardly believe that there
has been time to look before the refuse has been
swept off the board. Doubtless valuable stones are
sometimes missed and a percentage of loss must
be reckoned with. In order to guard against it,
especially in the larger -grained stuff, the whole
refuse of the sorting is carried out and spread upon
sacks in the yard, where men are employed to sort
it a second time. The quantity of recovered
diamonds is sufficient to justify the precaution, but
it is not very great. The diamonds from the sort-
ing room are made into parcels twice a day, and

12 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA I

sent under armed escort to the office, where they are
again sorted for commercial purposes by practised
valuers. It is in this office that the great variety
as well as beauty of the stones can be appreciated.
There are specimens cut and uncut of every kind and
colour. After the white diamond the yellow is the
most frequent, but there are also stones of green and
purple, pink, blue, and almost black shades, in which
brilliancy and colour appear to combine for their
very highest expression. Here the industry is lost
sight of, and the gem value of the diamonds asserts
itself.

II

KlMBERLEY.

PERHAPS the most interesting part of the Kimberley
mines is the manner in which the De Beers Company
have dealt with the difficult labour question of the
country. The mines employ three kinds of labour
— convicts, free natives, and white men. The con-
victs may be left out of count as constituting only
a small and abnormal element, and the numbers
which remain are 6000 natives and 1400 whites,
exclusive of superior officials. The average wages
are £1 a week for the natives, and from ^3 : 10s.
a week upwards for the white man. Mr. Rhodes
was heard to say in a London drawing-room last
year that it was the reading of Germinal which had
caused him to realise the necessity of providing
decent homes and harmless pleasures for the Kim-
berley miners. If so, the fact marks Kimberley as
a curious link between the double chains of Euro-
pean and African experience which meet here
abruptly, and M. Zola can have the pleasure of
knowing that there is at least one work of his
which has not been barren of fruit. All the men
employed in the De Beers mine have homes provided
for them suitable to their condition.

The village of Kenilworth, where the white men

i4 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA H

live, is Mr. Rhodes's special personal hobby. It is
on the De Beers estate, at a distance of about a
mile and a half from the town and mine. A tram
takes the men to and from their work. The first
charm of the place, situated in a naturally treeless
plain, near a town of corrugated iron, is that it has
been well planted with eucalyptus trees and shrubs
and vines, and that the houses are of pleasing archi-
tectural designs, built chiefly of brick and wood.
They stand either singly or in pairs in their own
gardens. The centre of the settlement is a club-
house, which is surrounded by its own well-kept
grounds, and includes library, billiard-rooms, reading-
rooms, and dining-hall. The houses in which quar-
ters are let to single men stand nearest to it, and
the dining-hall is habitually used as a common
mess. The feeding arrangements are made by
contract with a caterer, to whom each man pays
25 s. a week.

Dinner for the evening shift was in course of
preparation as we passed through the kitchen, and
consisted of soup, two entrees, and five or six joints,
with vegetables and sweets. The tables in the
large, cool dining-room were laid with clean cloths
and table napkins, and the whole tone and aspect of
the establishment were of a kind in which a culti-
vated man could live without loss of decency or
self-respect. People were sauntering in and out of
the reading-room with illustrated papers in their
hands to enjoy the last sunshine on the verandah.
The garden was a mass of flowers. A young couple
were walking away under a long vine trellis known
as the Lovers' Walk.

At nightfall, when the sun is gone, the air becomes

II LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 15

again sharply cold. Then fires would be lit, I was
told, in the principal rooms, and the place would fill
for the evening. With the recollection of some of
our own mining towns in my mind and a remem-
brance of the picture presented by the book from
which this settlement had sprung, it seemed scarcely
credible to me that this could be the everyday
aspect of a miner's home life in Africa. Yet every
question I asked drew only answers which assured
me that, with a due allowance for the inevitable
irregularities of human nature, it represented, not
only the superficial appearance, but the everyday
habits which correspond to an appearance of re-
spectability, comfort, and intelligence. Single men
in this settlement pay £1 a. month for their quarters.
This, with the 25 s. a week for their board, leaves
them still a handsome margin of wages. The most
expensive married quarters, which look like pretty
little villas outside, and are fitted with every con-
venience within, cost £$ a month. I asked how
the scheme answered from the financial point of
view, and was told that it yields an interest of 5
per cent upon the invested capital. The present
settlement is only large enough to accommodate
the workmen of the De Beers mine. It is, how-
ever, in contemplation to make an extension which
shall take in the workmen of the Kimberley mine
also.

From this practical recognition of the principle
of equality between man and man, it was at once
striking and interesting to drive to one of the " com-
pounds " or locations which are provided for the
native labourers. In order to check drunkenness
and diamond-stealing among the natives it has been

16 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA n

found absolutely necessary to place them under
supervision during the term of their engagement in
the mine. Every native labourer who is employed
by the De Beers Company engages to live in one of
the company's compounds and to obey its regula-
tions, and from the day he enters the compound he
does not again leave it until he is discharged or has
obtained a formal leave of absence. He sees his
wives and family, if they choose to visit him, in the
presence of an overseer, and he speaks to them
through a grating. He never approaches so close
to them as to be able under any pretence to pass a
diamond from one hand to another.

The compound communicates by means of a
covered way with the mine to which he goes for
his work. Except to work he has no communi-
cation with the world. The conditions of seclusion
are as absolute as those of the life of any monk, and
the compound is described in one sentence when it
is called a monastery of labour. Yet the compounds
are voluntarily filled to the required number, and
many of their inhabitants have, with occasional leave
of absence, remained in them for years. The one
which we visited contained when it was full about
2600 men. Nine hundred were absent in the mine.
The remaining 1700 were busy with the preparation
of their evening meal. The sun was setting over
the roofs of the huts, which enclose a great square.

A few dusky figures, wrapped in blankets mostly
of a bright terra-cotta colour, caught the eye as they
moved in the light of the last rays, but twilight
shadows had already fallen upon the greater part of
the courtyard. Perhaps as many as a hundred fires
blazed before the open doors of the huts, and round

ii LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 17

each fire a circle was gathered of natives, dressed
and undressed, varying in degrees of duskiness, but
all alike composing groups in the warm flame-light,
with now a face here, an arm or a leg there, thrown
into sharp relief that would have defied either painter
or sculptor to reproduce. From black and gray and
smoke-colour to the high lights of burnished copper,
rendered sharper by the white and blue tongues of
the blazing wood, no gradation was missing. Large
three-legged pots were pushed into the embers and
presided over by one or two members of each circle.
The remainder, while they waited for their supper,
were engaged in chatting, smoking, and playing a
game with pebbles upon a sort of chess-board
marked out in the earth, which is, I was told, almost
as classic an amusement among African natives as
chess among their Aryan cousins. Upon investiga-
tion we found that the contents of the supper-pots
varied a good deal, each man or group providing as
they pleased for their own wants.

Wages are high, and every form of food material
which is likely to be required can be obtained at
reasonable prices in the canteen of the compound.
Intoxicating liquor is, of course, absolutely ex-
cluded, but tea, coffee, and a variety of harmless
drinks are to be bought, and the crowd which filled
the canteen when we visited it testified to the fact
that the pleasures or necessities of the commissariat
are by no means neglected. Wood and water are
furnished without cost. Natives from all parts of
South Africa live together harmoniously in one
compound, but the custom is for the various tribes
to have their separate huts and messing arrange-
ments. Marked differences were observable in the

C

18 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA n

facial and other characteristics of the several groups,
and the working capacity of the different tribes is
found to vary in no less marked a degree. The
common opinion here and elsewhere appeared to be
that the Zulu and Basuto natives far surpass all
others in industry and adaptability to the require-
ments of civilised labour. The comforts of the
compound include swimming baths and a hospital,
where, in the accident ward, a number of natives
were amusing themselves with part - singing and
looked extremely cheerful. The only part of the
whole establishment in which the note of buoyant
good spirits appeared to flag was in the fever ward.
Here alone black heads lay languid on the pillows,
and the flash of white teeth in a ready laugh did not
greet our entrance.

Scarcely any difficulty, the manager assured us,
is experienced in the peaceful administration of the
compound. Each compound is, of course, under
white supervision. The men are usually satisfied
with the arrangements made for their comfort ;
quarrelling between them is rare, thieving from one
another is scarcely known, and when subjects of
dispute arise they are disposed of by appeal to the
white chief. The percentage of sickness is also low.
As a means of obtaining the maximum amount of
regular labour with a minimum of diamond-stealing,
drunkenness, and annoyance to the surrounding
population, the system has answered admirably, and
that it is popular among the natives themselves
seems to be scarcely doubtful. It is excessively
interesting, because it shows that it is possible to
get labour from the native, and to enable him to
earn a fair wage without immediately spending it in

ii LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 19

drink. It explodes also the theory current among
some employers of labour, that the native is ignorant
of the value of money and cannot be attracted by
high pay.

In the presence of the well -filled compounds
there can be no question that the material advan-
tages which they offer are as fully appreciated by
the natives as are the advantages of Kenilworth by
the white man. The two together may claim to
have created conditions of life which satisfy both the
white man and the native. The native is recognised
as the motor power by means of which material
development is carried out ; the white man takes
the position of director of this motor power, which
is the only position that he can hold with satisfaction
to himself in the African climate. Muscle on the
one side and brain on the other must, for a long
time to come, represent the respective contributions
of the two races to the public stock.

The merit of the method by which the Kimberley
mines are worked is that it acknowledges the fact
without sacrificing either the black man to the
white, or the white man to the black. So far, its
value as an example can hardly be overrated. The
objection is that in relation to the natives the
system is not a natural one, and, however successful
it may have proved itself under liberal management,
the conditions are too evidently artificial to be suit-
able for universal application. It shows what is
wanted, and it illustrates the result which may be
obtained. Beyond this it cannot be said to carry a
solution of the general problem which is perplex-
ing South Africa. The farmer, the shopkeeper, the
printer, the petty industrialist all over the country is

20 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA n

unable to offer high wages as a bait, and to segre-
gate his workmen in compounds from which external
temptations cannot lure them. The schemes of
compulsory labour which have from time to time
been devised fall to the ground because the difficulty
of finding one which is not slavery in disguise has
hitherto proved insuperable, and without compulsion
it has so far been found that the ordinary native is
like his ordinary fellow-man in this — that he does not
care to work after his most pressing wants have been
satisfied. A wife is soon bought, a hut is soon built,
and when these objects have been accomplished, he de-
fies white energy by preferring a pipe in the sun to all
the luxuries which continued labour could accumulate.

Like many another problem which seems at first
sight insoluble, the labour problem may be expected
to yield before the constant pressure of civilised
effort, and the difficulties attaching to it which the
De Beers Company have surmounted for themselves
in their own energetic way have not prevented the
conception of other enterprise, even in Kimberley
itself. The town is full of sanguine expectation
with regard to the result of the exhibition which is
to open in September,1 and the promoters of the
undertaking very naturally hope that the effect of it
will be productive of good throughout South Africa.

The preparation of the buildings and grounds is
being very actively carried on, and is on a larger
scale than any South African exhibition which
has hitherto been attempted. The most practical
interest will, of course, centre in the machinery
court, into which, in order to facilitate the delivery
of heavy goods, a branch line of rail has been run

1 Written in June 1892.

II LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 21

from the Government railway. As the railway will
be completed to Johannesburg and Pretoria before
the exhibition closes, mining machinery which is
exhibited at Kimberley and bought, as much of it
probably will be, for use in the Transvaal, will thus
have the advantage of arriving in the exhibition
court and of being despatched to its final destination
without having to bear the cost of one yard of
wagon transport.

It is hoped and expected that the mining court
will be unique in interest of its kind, for none has
ever yet been shown so near to mining centres
where the newest machinery is an urgent daily need,
and the output which demonstrates the effect of it
is so valuable. The De Beers Company will show
such a collection of diamonds as has probably never
come together before in any exhibition of the world
as the produce of one mine, and Johannesburg will
send the gold output of an entire month, represent-
ing a sum which, if the present rate of increase be
maintained, will soon not fall far short of half a
million sterling.

Special prizes have been awarded for diamond-
mining and for gold-concentrating machinery, and
in the presence of the diamonds and the gold even
an uninstructed public may be expected to appre-
ciate the interest attaching to the process of extrac-
tion. A dry concentrator for gold would make it
possible to work many a mine which the absence of
water now renders unpayable. In the Hopetown
district alone there is an immense area covered with
shale which contains gold-bearing copper ore. The
ore runs 4 ounces to the ton ; the quantity of it
is practically unlimited, but the district is waterless,

22 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA n

and machinery has yet to be found which will
extract the ore without water from the shale. The
value of a more perfect system of diamond-sorting
will be realised by every visitor who spends a spare
afternoon in the De Beers mine.

But mining interests are not the only ones which
are to receive attention in the machinery court.
Agricultural questions in a country of which the
soil is so extraordinarily fertile present themselves
in forms which are scarcely less novel, and are cer-
tainly not less important. For hundreds and hun-
dreds of square miles in the neighbourhood of
Kimberley the now bare veldt would, it is believed,
bear crops of the same amazing richness as the
cultivated portions of the Transvaal, if the waters
of the Orange River, the Modder, and the Vaal
could be saved from flowing, as they now flow, in
mere waste out towards the sea. The average level
of these river - beds is 60 feet below the average
level of the land. Water - lifting machinery, which
has done such wonders in Australia, would be no
less valuable in application here, and Messrs.
Chaffey Brothers have promised to put their Aus-
tralian experience at the service of South Africa
to the extent of sending experimental machinery
purposely designed. Dairy machinery is also
in much request, as well as other agricultural
machinery suitable to farming on a large and
varied scale.

Crops and methods in South Africa are un-
doubtedly more like those of Australia and America
than of England, and it is perhaps natural that
American and Australian machinery should appear
to be beating our own out of the field. Never-

ii LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 23

theless, from the English point of view it is in-
finitely regrettable to learn in face of such a
manifestly opening market that English makers
will no longer take the trouble to adapt their
patterns to the new necessities created by the new
conditions, and that alike in the departments of
mining and agriculture they are losing ground
every day. It is hardly, perhaps, realised at home
how rapidly this transfer of trade is taking place,
for the increase which, according to old doctrines
of English manufacturing supremacy, ought to have
come to England has only existed within the last
few years. Four or five years ago English firms
possessed the entire machinery trade of South
Africa ; but Johannesburg is only five years old,
and at the present moment the American firm
of Messrs. Fraser and Chalmers supplies at least
40 per cent of the mining machinery in use
on the Rand.

American firms are active in sending repre-
sentatives to study requirements on the spot, and
every effort is made by them to adapt the new
machines which they send out to the, in many
cases, entirely new needs of the situation. It is a
race between new patterns and excellence of
material, in which latter quality English goods still
hold their superiority, and new patterns are rapidly
winning. The case of boilers is a typical one in
point. Four years ago England had a monopoly
of the boiler trade. Now, not only are American
boilers in frequent use, but when a prize was
offered at the exhibition for an improved form
more suited to the fuel of the country, the prin-
cipal American firm volunteered to send out a

24 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA n

boiler, set it up, and work it at their own expense
during the exhibition, while the best known English
firms decline to compete, on the ground that their
trade is fully established. So far is it, in truth,
from being fully established, that it is in danger of
disappearing altogether, and in all reasonable prob-
ability the result of the exhibition can only be to
give a further push to its downward progress.

If the effect of the exhibition be in any degree
to develop the gold-bearing and agricultural possi-
bilities of the Kimberley district, and thus to redeem
the town from its present position of depending
exclusively upon the diamond industry, the primary
object of the local organisation will be gained. In
its wider scope of developing and adding to the
knowledge already possessed of South African re-
sources, and of the past history and future possibili-
ties of this extraordinarily interesting portion of the
continent, the opportunities offered by the exhibition
are to be utilised for scientific and historic purposes.
It is proposed especially to compile a practical hand-
book or manual of the mineral and agricultural
resources of the country, for which purpose a com-
mittee has been named and circulars sent out inviting
contributions in the form of both specimens and
information from men of experience in all parts of
the colonies and States.

Soil, water, climate, natural vegetation, crops,
stock, mineral-bearing formations, systems of agricul-
ture, fruit-growing, cattle-breeding, fisheries, and
mining possibilities will all be made the subject of
close and organised inquiry, and it is believed that a
comparison of specimens and of the knowledge which
many African visitors will bring in their own persons

n LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 25

to the exhibition ought to result in the acquisition
of a very valuable body of new facts. There will be
native courts, which it is proposed to organise on the
principle of the Japanese village at Kensington some
years ago, showing the various native industries and
natives at work upon them ; and amongst the enter-
tainments which are to take place in the central hall
of the building there will be a series of lectures upon
native history and habits.

The important question of the climate of South
Africa in its relation to health is also to receive
attention, and the Sanitary Congress will hold a
sitting with this special object during the exhibition.
The other conditions will be much like those of every
exhibition which has been held of late years. All
the space that was available for English and foreign
courts has been engaged. There will be a ladies'
court, showing the work and industries of the women
of South Africa ; and for that large majority of the
public which does not look at the exhibits, there
will be the usual entertainment in the way of music,
illuminations, and refreshment rooms. There was a
design to arrange the grounds as a botanic garden of
South African plants. The difficulties in the way of
carrying out the proposal have been found insur-
mountable in the available time, but as far as it is
possible South African plants and flowers are to be
brought together and shown in the fairly extensive
gardens which surround the buildings. The contract
for the nightly illumination has been takeig by the
same firm which is to light the World's Fair of
Chicago, and an English band is to be imported for
the occasion.

The really great obstacle to success which is pre-

26 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA n

sented by the distance of Kimberley from the coast
has been, as far as possible, got over by the co-
operation of the Cape Government in reducing the
railway rates and furnishing special advantages in
excursion trains, and correspondence with Messrs.
Cook seems to promise the full complement of tourists
which has been calculated as essential to a satisfac-
tory balance of accounts. The idea is that the
extension of the railway through the Transvaal,
which will enable visitors to Kimberley to extend
their trip, if they desire it, to Johannesburg, may, in
combination with the charms of a South African
spring, bring many holiday-makers, who will find the
journey not much more expensive and the change
and scope of travel much greater than that afforded
by their usual autumn excursion. If this expecta-
tion prove correct, and South Africa be brought, as it
well may be, under new developments of steamship
and railway communication, into the ordinary beat of
excursionist travel, the Kimberley Exhibition may
fairly claim to have done a good deal for the material
development of the country. One of the first require-
ments of South Africa in its present stage is to be
seen. It teems with such astonishing possibilities
that if that be achieved the rest may safely be left to
time.

Ill

Johannesburg.

The journey from Kimberley to Vereeniging, on
the Vaal River, which is at present the farthest
extension of the railway, takes two days and two
nights. When the cross -line from Kimberley to
Bloemfontein is constructed through the Free State,
and the necessity for going round three sides of a
long parallelogram is got rid of, there will be a
saving of about eighteen hours. Further improve-
ments upon the northern part of the line may be
expected to increase the speed, and the extension to
Johannesburg, when all is finished, will bring that
town within twenty-four hours of Kimberley. The
connecting branch which is so much needed for the
journey from Kimberley will not affect the railway
distance from Cape Town, which has already been
taken along the most direct line, and will measure
something under a thousand miles to Johannesburg
and Pretoria. Allowing for some moderate improve-
ments in speed, it is hoped that before the end of
the present year it may be possible to go direct
from Cape Town to Johannesburg in two days and
a half. The through trains will have sleeping-cars
and kitchens attached to them, and the journey will
entail comparatively little fatigue or discomfort.

28 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA m

The present terminus on the Transvaal side of
the Vaal River is a mere engineer's camp upon the
veldt. It has only been in existence for a few-
weeks, and is still a confusion of tents and railway
sleepers, luggage and cooking pots, in the midst of
which I noted, on the afternoon of our arrival, the
characteristic detail of no fewer than six pianos
waiting for the ox-wagons which were to carry
them away. Passengers and their lighter luggage
are still conveyed in the wonderful circus-like vehicles
slung on leathern straps and drawn by a team of ten
or twelve horses, which not long ago constituted the
only means of communication. An experience of
seven hours in one of them over a road deep in
sand, intersected by streams and broken by unex-
pected outcroppings of rock, is enough to teach a
hearty and grateful realisation of the comforts of
the train. The team was changed five times, giving
us in all sixty mules to do a journey of about 50
miles.

But coaches are already a thing of the past. In
a very few months they will have ceased to exist
upon this line of travel, and there is no need to
dwell upon their miseries. At present the sense of
connection broken with the outer world and the
half- day's hard gallop over the bare veldt only
heighten the effect of the town of Johannesburg
when it is reached. It is neither beautiful nor im-
pressive from the aesthetic point of view, but it
might be set down as it stands in any part of the
civilised world. It has a population of about 40,000.
The buildings are good, the streets are broad ; there
are shops with plate-glass windows full of ball-dresses
and silver plate ; the residential quarters are rapidly

in LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 29

spreading themselves out into squares and boule-
vards ; a tram-line connects them with the business
centre ; for 20 miles east and west you may see
the funnels of mining works smoking against the
sky ; the sound of an engine-whistle is in your ears,
and you find that a train has been constructed which
runs from one end of the Rand to the other. The
town is lit with gas, water is supplied to all its
houses, every ordinary appliance of civilisation is
here ; and, when you remember that it has all been
done in five years, and that every scrap of material
has been carried up, and the six pianos waiting at
the frontier wrill presently be carried by ox-wagons,
you begin to realise something of the extraordinary
conditions which can have called so sudden a de-
velopment into existence.

Johannesburg stands upon gold. When I wanted
to have my conception of the position cleared, an
engineer, who was showing me over one of the mines,
took an enamelled iron basin and said : " Imagine
this thing magnified in thickness, battered a little,
and elongated to an irregular oval of which the
longest axis is about 40 miles. If you like you
can call the white enamel on the inside the hang-
ing-wall, and the blue enamel on the outside the
foot - wall. Thus the iron is the gold - bearing
reef, and you have an imperfect model of what
we believe we know of the gold formation of the
Rand."

The object of all the mines which are situated
upon the top edge of the lip is to get out the iron
which represents the gold-bearing reef. The im-
portant question for each mine is the angle at which
the reef descends through the ground which has been

3o LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA in

secured in surface claims ; and the question of supreme
importance for the future of the Witwatersrand gold
industry as a whole is whether the gold reef does
turn like the basin at the deep levels and lie along
at a workable depth, or whether it goes away, still
descending into the bowels of the earth. The model
would have been more perfect if three basins had
been put one inside another, for the conglomerate
gold-bearing beds locally known as "Banket Reef"
descend in three parallel lines. They have been
proved in places where they dipped near the surface
at an angle of 70 degrees to flatten at the 500 feet
level to an angle of 30 degrees from the horizon.
The immense advantage of this is evident, for a
measurement of 3000 feet along the reef, which, if
the lode were vertical might represent the limit of
possible work, can here be reached at an actual depth
of only 1500 feet from the surface. The flattening
tendency of the angle of descent appears from the
latest developments to continue. If it does, and if
the reefs continue rich as they are near the surface,
there will be no limit to the possible working until
at some future time the entire gold reef has been
removed.

Boring and sinking operations have proved that
the reefs are, as a general rule, both larger and
richer in the lower levels than in the upper levels ;
and, more than this, it has been found that, overlying
the known series, there are in the lower levels other
conglomerate beds of a workable size and value
which give no indication whatever of their existence
at or near the surface. In one place, at a depth of
600 feet, there are six lodes of payable size and
value three of which show no sign on the surface,

in LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 31

and only begin to appear in their broken lines of
conglomerate pebbles at a depth of 300 feet. Indi-
cations of this kind open prospects of great speculative
interest in the developments of the near future. There
is an element of the unknown in it all, but it is of
an unknown into which many incursions by way of
experiment have been made, and the opinion of men
who are in the best position to form well-founded
conclusions appears to be practically unanimous that
the productive capacity of the deep levels will
prove not less than that of the companies work-
ing on the outcrop itself, while it may prove much
greater.

At this moment there are fifty-three companies
working on the outcrop claims. They employ 3370
white men and 32,100 natives, and they are pro-
ducing gold at the rate of ,£4,500,000 sterling per
annum. And these figures are only an approxima-
tion to the possible output from existing sources.
Very few of the mines have attained to more than
half their full legitimate production. Many are
working with inadequate machinery and develop-
ment, and on almost virgin property. Some are
not at present contributing to the output at all, but
are developing with a view to future results. Better
methods of working, modern developments in the
scientific treatment of ore, and cheapened transport,
which will allow of the freer use of machinery, must
steadily increase the total of production.

One particularly interesting element in the per-
manent sources of increase is the new departure which
has lately been made in the chemical treatment of
concentrates and tailings. Chlorination and cyanide
works have been established, in which, by an ingenious

32 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA in

and simple process, gold is melted by solution out of
the powdered ore, just as sugar might be melted out
of sawdust. A quantity of gold which used to be
lost is in this way recovered, and goes to swell the
average of production. The amount may be judged
by the returns for May, which were the latest I was
able to obtain. The ordinary mill returns gave
9.99 dwt. of gold per ton of ore produced, while gold
recovered from all sources brought the average up
to 12.3 dwt. per ton. The cyanide of potassium
process has been so lately adopted that tailings are
being produced eight times faster than they can at
present be dealt with. The mass of accumulated
tailings has, therefore, to be reckoned in the assets
of the future.

The late depression in shares is another fact which
is reckoned by the owners of mines as a cause of
increase in the output. It has had the effect of
sending underground managers, mining engineers,
and others employed in the mines away from the
speculative markets and back to their work, where
during the boom it was next door to an impossibility
to keep them. The result has been a considerable
development, which is now showing fruit. Year by
year since the first returns were made upon the
Rand, in the middle of 1887, the figures of the out-
put have shown a steady increase. For the first
half-year up to the end of 1887 they were 23,155
oz. ; in 1888, 208,121 oz. ; in 1889, 369,5 57 oz. ;
in 1890, 494,817 oz. ; in 1891, 729,338 oz. ; and
for the six months which have elapsed of 1892 the
total returns have already reached 562,452 oz.
There seems to be little doubt in the minds of the
best men in Johannesburg that this increase might

in LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 33

be expected to grow steadily. The opening of the
railway will further so cheapen transport as to render
possible the working of a number of low-grade reefs,
which are at present considered unpayable, and if
the views generally entertained with regard to the
deep-level workings be correct, the basin of the Rand
may be held to be only at the beginning of an
unparalleled record of gold production.

The Witwatersrand is the best known, the best
developed, and probably the richest of the gold-fields
of the Transvaal, but there are still many others
of which the capacities have been very imperfectly
tested. The conglomerate beds of the Klerksdorp
fields are of low grade, but they are large and
regular, and they are precisely the sort of reef of
which the working will profit by the cheapening of
transport. Barberton, Lydenburg, Zoutpansberg,
Middelburg, have all yielded returns which are not
to be despised. In the Malmani, Potchefstroom,
and Pretoria districts gold-mining is still only in its
pioneer stage. Gold reefs occur in almost every
part of the country, and, though the unreliability of
the rotten quartz lodes of Lydenburg and the gash
and fissure mines of Barberton and other districts
has strengthened the belief that in this country con-
glomerate beds alone can support a really great gold
industry, no one can say with assured conviction that
another Rand may not any day be opened to de-
velopment. Gold does not labour under the dis-
advantage of diamonds, that over-production is likely
to lessen its value appreciably in the markets of the
world. The Transvaal offers, therefore, a practically
unlimited field of enterprise in this direction.

Next to gold comes the silver industry. Already

D

34 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA m

the question of its development takes rank in the
questions which interest Johannesburg with the
development of the deep levels of the Rand. They
are two great mining questions of the immediate
future. Silver zones extend over about 1500 square
miles of country in the Pretoria and Middelburg
districts. Some of the lodes are large and of very
high grade. They have been opened up to a depth
of 300 feet, and have been proved to have an
average mineral contents of 25 per cent of lead and
30 oz. of silver per ton. The shipments which
have been made have proved highly profitable, but
only the best ores can stand the cost of transport
and shipping. Silver-mining as an industry must,
therefore, depend upon local treatment. The first
smelting on a large scale will take place this month,1
and the result is looked for with great interest as
well as confidence. With beds so rich and so ex-
tensive there is little doubt of the ultimate result, but
profitable development may have to wait, like that
of other industries, for the opening of the railway.

It is difficult to imagine as yet how great a
difference the opening of railway communication will
make to the development of the Transvaal. The
country waits for it, as a forest when the sap is
rising waits for the spring sunshine to bring it into
leaf. Gold and silver, by their precious quality in
small bulk, appeal to the imagination, and a country
which is rich in them is at once reckoned among
the rich places of the earth. But in the opinion of
many capitalists the working of these metals only
touches the fringe of the real mineral wealth which
is waiting for development. Iron and copper will, it

1 Written in July 1892.

in LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 35

is thought, form the staple of mining industry when
facilities of transport have made it possible to work
them at a profit. The quantities which exist are
sufficient to give employment to successive genera-
tions long after every scrap of now prospected gold
and silver has been taken from the ground.

The country also teems with coal. Coal-fields
divide and partly encircle the gold and silver regions.
In the neighbourhood of Bohsberg coal, which is the
later formation, overlies the gold, the two formations
having actually been struck in the same shaft. This
coal is not of good quality, but at Brakpan colliery,
20 miles by rail from Johannesburg, good steam-
coal is turned out at the rate of 1 6,000 tons monthly.
At a vertical depth of 90 feet the seam is 25 feet
thick, and extends for some miles. The Brakpan pit
is within a few hundred yards of some of the best
mines on the eastern end of the Rand. On the
Vaal River, surrounding the present terminus of
the Cape railway, there is an extensive coal-field of
still better class ; and at the Oliphant River pits,
which, notwithstanding 50 miles of road transport,
at present supply Johannesburg with gas and coking-
coal, a coal is obtained which is esteemed to be
nearly equal to the best imported.

Almost the whole of the plateau known as the
High Veldt contains huge coal deposits, and in
the Heidelburg, Middelburg, Pretoria, Ermelo, and
Wakkerstroom districts, down to the borders of Swazi-
land and Natal, there are thousands of square miles
of coal-beds, of which the value is utterly unknown.
The mere fact that at Cape Town coal for domestic
purposes costs at present ^3 : 12s. a ton, and that at
Kimberley the price has been known to mount to

36 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA m

£9 a ton, is enough to illustrate the possible value
of the Transvaal beds. Many other minerals, such
as cobalt, asbestos, cinnabar, etc., occur in various
districts.

Never was there a country to which the saying
of Job could be more suggestively applied :
" Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for
gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the
earth, and brass is molten out of the stone. ... As
for the earth, out of it cometh bread." In Johannes-
burg, whether you will or not, you must take interest
in the details of mining enterprise. Your ears are
filled with them from morning to night. Men who
have been successful in the past are confident of the
future, and the place literally simmers with the
energy of fresh undertakings. You are no sooner
well out of the town than your attention is drawn,
with scarcely less overwhelming evidence, to the
agricultural possibilities of the soil.

Between Johannesburg and Pretoria, on either
side of the line of the future railway, there lies a
farm of which the fence measures 24 miles round.
The extent of it includes mountain-tops and water-
levels. Scientific farming has only been attempted
upon it within the last two years, and if I were to
endeavour to describe the full result I should prob-
ably be accused of wishing to re-edit Robinson
Crusoe. Everything that is written of the material
resources of this astonishing country must read like
exaggeration, and yet exaggeration is hardly possible.
The fertility of the soil is no less amazing than the
mineral wealth. The farm of which I speak lies on
the northern slopes of the descent from Johannesburg
— northern having, of course, in this hemisphere the

in LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 37

signification of southern in our own. Its valleys
have, therefore, every advantage of sunny and
sheltered situation, and it is scarcely too much to
say that it includes within its fence all the climates
of the temperate world. The hill-tops have been
planted with European forest trees — pine, oak,
chestnut, etc. ; the lower slopes are clothed with
vines ; and in the valleys plantations of oranges and
lemons alternate with American, Australian, and
African timber.

There is hardly a crop from tea to turnips which
I did not see in the course of a long morning's
drive. Among them were the Pyrethrum persicum>
better known to fame in the form of Keating's insect
powder, and the pea-nut, of which the pretty habits
of growth and the profitable nature as an article of
consumption were alike unknown to me. Another
specially African crop were the varieties of water-
melon, which are grown for feeding cattle, and of
which fields still lay ripening in the sun. It was,
however, a little late for them, as the plants die down
under the first frosts, which are usually felt about the
middle of May.

Winter is accounted to last here from the 15 th
of May to the 15 th of August, and during those
months there is little or no rain. The remaining
nine months of the year are summer months, during
which the rainfall is plentiful and regular. Most
European cereals and roots yield more than one crop
in the year. Wheat, rye, and barley are sown in
April, May, June, July, and reaped in September,
October, and November. Oats are sown the whole
year round, but only rust -proof varieties in the
summer. Potatoes are planted every month from

38 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA m

August until February. Those planted in August,
September, and October are ripe and can be used
for seed to be planted from December to January.
Swedish turnips, mangold -wurzel, beets, carrots,
onions, peas, and all varieties of the cabbage family
are sown and reaped the whole year round. The
native crops of maize, millet, sorghum, broom-corn,
sweet-corn, etc., are sown from August to January.
Sowing and reaping go on all the year side by side
and there is no fallow time for the ground.

The best illustration is a mere list of the crops
which I noted on either side as we drove down one
avenue alone ; it is to be remembered that we were
nearly in mid-winter. There were pea-nuts ready
for reaping and green oats, barley in the ear and
barley in the shoot, Swedish turnips fit for storing
and Swedish turnips just shooting, mangold-wurzel
also in both stages, rye in the ear, carrots quite
young and carrots ready for storing, potatoes in
both stages ; and in one immense field the sowers
and the reapers had literally met. At the far end
maize was standing, reapers were busy cutting and
carrying the sheaves of corn, upon their heels sowers
followed putting wheat into the ground, and at the
near end, where, my host told me, maize had been
standing ten days before, thin green blades of wheat
were already shooting.

So vigorous is the growth of everything, that
forest trees planted only two years ago were already
high enough to give shade ; apples grown from
seed of March and grafted in October will bear
fruit this year. With the exception of cherries,
gooseberries, and currants, all European fruits
flourish well. Throughout the estate the water-

hi LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 39

courses which divided the fields were bordered by
hedges of quince, pear, apple, plum, and peach.
The gardens contained a profusion of European
vegetables and fruit trees., Acres of roses, violets,
and ornamental plants surrounded the house, but
nothing seemed to impress upon me more vividly
the rapidity with which the place had sprung into
being than the simple fact that after hours of driving
through vineyards, woods, and cornfields we were
met at the door of the house by a baby child of
two and a half who was older than everything that
we had seen. The estate had been named after
her. When she was born the spot on which it
stands was nothing but bare veldt.

The idea occurs at once that this farm may have
been an exception. So it is in the matter of develop-
ment, for the Transvaal farms are, as a rule, cattle
farms upon which little or no agriculture in the
modern sense is carried on. But I am told that it
forms no exception whatever in the matter of soil
and climate. Land near the future railway is valu-
able, but the owner of the farm assured me that land
equally fertile may be obtained in almost any other
part of the Transvaal at the cost of a few shillings
an acre. Land companies are buying it up ; timber
companies are planting it, and the spread of lines of
communication will rapidly raise its value. A good
many fortunes will no doubt be lost as well as made
in speculation with it.

But wherever there is wealth to develop specula-
tion is only the forerunner of genuine enterprise ;
and seeing such a soil in one of the very best
climates of the world, with a mining population
pouring in to create markets on the spot, it is

4o LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA in

impossible to escape from the conviction that the
phenomenon which you witness in the eager push of
development all round is nothing less than a con-
tinent in the making. The natural resources are
here, capital and energy have been brought to bear
upon them, and the country appears to be opening
by a principle of growth as simple and as irresistible
as that which governs the opening of a rose in
summer. Improvement in the material conditions
is, of course, an essential part of the development.

At present, notwithstanding the agricultural
possibilities of the neighbourhood, the price of food
in Johannesburg and Pretoria is, with the one excep-
tion of meat, excessively high. A cauliflower in
Johannesburg will cost as much as 3s., eggs are from
5s. to 6s. a dozen, a half-quartern loaf costs is.,
milk goes up to is. 6d. a quart, and butter to 5s.
a pound. The farmer might be supposed to profit,
but in the long run he does not, for the market is so
unsteady that there are occasions when he finds it
impossible to dispose of perishable produce at any
price, and he never can count upon a regular
demand. The consumer in self-defence trusts largely
to tinned and imported food. Hence retaliatory
endeavours on the one hand to impose prohibitive
taxes upon food, and upon the other to obtain a
Customs Union which would include in its advan-
tages the right of free trade in food stuffs throughout
South Africa.

The economic theories of the Dutch agriculturist
are remarkable, and first among them ranks a belief
that markets must be treated like French babies and
closely swaddled to help their growth. The fact
that a large proportion of French babies die under

in LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 41

this process has not, so far as is generally known,
destroyed the faith of their nurses in the system.
Nor is the Dutch farmer a bit more naturally in-
clined to draw logical conclusions from his not
dissimilar experience. A well-to-do Boer was one
day boasting that he had obtained exactly double
the price which he had expected for his wheat. " I
suppose," an English friend said, congratulating him,
" that you will sow a double quantity this year."
" A double quantity ? " replied the Dutchman ; " half
the quantity you mean ! Don't you see that with a
double price half the quantity will give me the same
return ? " The advent of the railway can alone do
away with this kind of thing. Facilities of trans-
port will tend to equalise and enlarge existing
markets as well as to put the supply of the Trans-
vaal in touch with the demand of the world. This
done, it is scarcely to be conceived that Dutch pro-
ducers should remain still unwilling to benefit by
their wider opportunities. If they should, there is
but one thing that can happen. They will find
themselves exposed to the competition of foreigners
who will settle upon the soil, and they will be forced,
whether they will or no, to swim with the tide.
The main fact is, that a tide is rising which promises
to sweep obstacles of the Dame Partington kind
irresistibly before it.

The Transvaal has been proved to be as valuable as
Mr. Gladstone once thought it valueless, and nothing
short of a convulsion can arrest the developing move-
ment in which increasing numbers of men are every
day finding their individual advantage. The most
serious hindrance lies in the difficulty of obtaining
labour, and it is a difficulty which, as I pointed out

42 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA in

at Kimberley, has been only very partially sur-
mounted by the application of the compound system
to mining districts.

If I have filled my letter with details which give
it rather the appearance of a catalogue than a
description, it is because I want to support as far as
possible with the argument of facts the conclusion
that material development is the supreme interest
of the country. Johannesburg as a town sits in the
middle of this development, and to a great extent
directs it. Already it has placed a great distance
between itself and a mere mining camp, and is
rapidly advancing to the position which it desires to
take as the Manchester or Birmingham of South
Africa. That it has done as much as it has with-
out any connected line of communication is an
earnest of the growth which may be expected after
the railway has placed it upon the highways of the
world. The opportunities which it offers are very
great, and there is nothing to wonder at in the fact
that able and successful men who are gradually
gathering the development of productive enterprise
into their hands find a vitality in their daily work
with which they say that nothing in London or the
other European centres can compare. These are
the men who represent the progressive life of the
place.

The worthless and unscrupulous speculator who
has made Johannesburg a byword ot crooked ways
exists, of course, but it would be unjust not to
recognise that he exists as a parasite upon a better
growth. I think it may fairly be said that every-
thing which is not material development is mere
excrescence. The conditions of social life are for

in LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 43

the most part frankly detestable. It is an opinion
in which I have no fear that the better portion of
Johannesburg society will not cordially agree. But
they are not worth writing about. They must
evidently change — are changing in fact — with the
changing future ; and in relation to the future the
enormous wealth of the country has such a pre-
ponderating importance that the course which the
development of that wealth is likely to follow
absorbs all serious attention. The whole political
situation hangs upon the material situation. But
I hope to show this more clearly in a letter from
Pretoria.

IV

Pretoria.

Pretoria as it is first seen lying in a ford of the
veldt at the foot of the Johannesburg slopes, with
its white houses embosomed in trees and gardens,
divided each from the other by blossoming rose
hedges, has all the character of the capital of a
pastoral Republic. As you approach and enter the
streets you find that its changing position as the
political centre of a new and rapidly-growing country
is no less faithfully expressed. The first object
which struck my eye was a big placard announcing
in English that an auction of farm-stock would be
held on the following Thursday. A few steps
farther on another English advertisement gave
notice of a political meeting. In the first street
of shops, bootmakers and haberdashers, stationers
and butchers, declared their trades in English ;
announcements of sales, assurances of bargains, were
all posted up in English.

Evidently the public whom these things concerned
was English. At the hotel the coloured servants
spoke in English, and dinner hour filled the dining-
rooms with Englishmen. I had occasion to seek
out a friend whose address I did not know. In the

iv LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 45

course of a morning's drive, inquiring at perhaps
twenty houses, though my companion, who was a
native of the place, served as the medium of
communication, there was not one house in which
English was not the common language. The first
Dutch words which I heard spoken in Pretoria were
in the house of President Kruger, and a hasty im-
pression might lead to the belief that the only Dutch
things in the town are its President and Council.

This impression is far from being literally accurate.
The Boer population of the Republic has its fit-
ting representation here. Dutch feeling and Dutch
habits of life and thought are the substratum upon
which the town exists, and Dutch character is too
sturdy and tenacious to allow itself to be easily
carried away in the foreign stream. But in relation
to what may be called the New Transvaal — that is,
the Transvaal of the modern mining development,
the Transvaal which is taking its place in the
competition of the world — the impression is near
enough to the truth to be accepted as at least
typifying the actual state of affairs. The pastoral
Transvaal is Dutch. The industrial Transvaal,
actually cosmopolitan, is practically an English
state presided over by a Dutch government. That
these two Transvaals should be so intimately inter-
mingled as to have no geographical dividing lines,
does not alter the fact that the two exist within the
frontiers traced by the Vaal and Limpopo rivers.

At present the English Transvaal concerns itself
very little with politics. It is too busy with the
work it has undertaken. Time enough when theories
of government affect the business of development to
have opinions about them. A President who puts

46 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA iv

obstacles in the way of the mining industry will be
roughly hooted at Johannesburg. A President who
grants running powers to a Cape and Free State
Railway will be cheered and received with flags and
triumphal arches. He is one and the same man.
No matter ! The President is nothing to them ;
they want mining facilities and cheap transport, and
take their own impolite, vigorous way of expressing
the fact. Their concern is with the world rather
than with the Transvaal. Yet they form part of
the Transvaal, and as they follow their rough pro-
gressive road, they drag it half-unconsciously along
with them. Briefly, their affairs may be said to
constitute the foreign politics of the Republic, but
they are generally content to leave them in other
hands. The affairs of their pastoral neighbours are
the home affairs to which newcomers are still too
strange to give a thought. But it is perfectly
evident that home and foreign affairs cannot remain
distinct, nor the old and the new Republics exist
for ever within the same frontier without becoming
interfused.

The question of the future is under what con-
ditions this fusion of interests will take place.
There are people who regard the two forces as
necessarily antagonistic. For them it resolves it-
self into the simpler question of which is to
dominate the other. But looked at in a broader
light it is possible to think that, before the day of
domination comes for either, the interests of both
are likely to be identical. We have a parallel to
this position at home, in the apparently opposed
yet intimately united interests of the Liberals of
the manufacturing centres and the Tory land-

iv LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 47

owners of the counties ; and as there is not a
man of either of the great English parties who
does not feel that the welfare of England is his
individual welfare, so it may be believed that
before many years are past there will not be a
man of either of the two Transvaals who will not
feel that the good of the whole is his first and most
intimate necessity. It may be said that the
position is not parallel, because at home the
nationality of both parties is the same, while
here you have not only two parties but two
peoples.

The new element in the situation is that this
is a country in the making. Its parts are not
yet welded together. We are assisting at the
very interesting process, and nothing impresses
itself more vividly as a result of watching it
upon the spot than the futility of stirring questions
of sentimental politics in the face of the over-
whelming movement which is taking place. The
operation of natural causes is all in favour of a
successful issue. Let events take their course.
The one thing to which they point unmistakably
is the creation of an enormously rich province
in South Africa. This is no less advantageous
to South Africa than it is to the Republic itself,
and since the increase of development in the Trans-
vaal is synonymous with the increase of English
influence there can be no doubt, so far as the
strictly English part of the position is concerned,
that English interest is to support and encourage
the new development in every possible way. The
natural wealth is Dutch, the energy to develop
it is English, the profits of the whole will be

48 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA iv

South African. It is almost an ideal situation
if it can be protected from accident and left to
the laws of its inherent evolution.

Unfortunately this is a great deal to ask. It
means the sacrifice of prejudices on every side,
and, furthermore, it presupposes that, even in this
early stage of their coexistence, the wants and
desires of the Old Transvaal are never to clash
with the requirements of the New. The New
Transvaal has no history and no sentiment. It
has the present situation, and intends to make
its history in the future. The three essential con-
ditions to making it successfully are peace, facilities
of transport, and better labour. If it can get these
it wants nothing else.

But with the Old Transvaal the position is
different. The Old Transvaal has its history, a
vivid history which men of the last generation
sacrificed everything to make and some of the
present generation have fought and died for. It
has its inheritance of sentiment stronger than any
logic of self-interest, and there are points upon
which, no matter what the consequences, its
burghers take their stand behind their rifles and
say, in the old Lutheran phrase, " We can no
otherwise." To suppose that it can see without
jealousy the new English Transvaal growing rapidly
in its midst is to suppose the impossible. It
may be for the ultimate good of the Republic
that its resources should be utilised ; but there is
scarcely a farmer in the whole population wTho does
not dread and resent the finding of payable
minerals upon his farm. The anecdotes which
abound with regard to their conduct when the

iv LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 49

fear is realised and minerals are found have their
touching as well as their comic side. Corn and
stock, not gold and silver, constitute their wealth.
If a man can sell his farm and move on, well
and good ; trekking enters into their customs and
costs them little.

But " moving on " grows more and more difficult
every day. Where are they to move to ? They
look round them. South and west there is no issue.
Northward ? They used to think, not many years
ago, that there across the Limpopo lay a limitless
field in which their instinct of expansion might find
play for generations yet to come. But their President
— the man whom they themselves have chosen for
their head — has entered into a compact with England
by which he binds himself and them never to extend
the frontier beyond the river. England is filling that
country which they had vaguely thought of as theirs.
They fall back like caged animals upon themselves
and the farms rendered hateful to them by the sound
of pick and stamp battery close at hand, and turn
their faces eastward towards the sea. Out that way
beyond the mountains, out that way towards the
world, their appetite for space and freedom may
be gratified. They have, after all, the blood of old
Holland in their veins. The land of the continent
has been closed to them. They ask for a sea-gate.
It is easy to understand. They see that England
has surrounded them by a ring fence, that she has
even made irruption in irrepressible form within the
fence. They feel the danger that they may be stifled
out of their national existence, and they want an
air-hole. They think that it will be more possible
to contend with the foreign influence that permeates

E

50 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA iv

their being if they have ships of their own upon the
sea. It strikes the English observer as a natural
but rather pathetic hope. They are too late. Other
nations are too far ahead of them in the naval race.
If war should break out in Europe they must trust
to England to protect them. In peace that must
inevitably happen to them which happens to all
nations. Their commercial navy will be the pos-
session of their merchant princes — that is to say, of
the very New Transvaal against whose supremacy
its creation is now designed to strike a blow.

It is not, therefore, without significance that the
Dutch language should have first greeted me at
President Kruger's door. In crossing his threshold
I entered the region of Dutch sentiment. There was
nothing of which he wished to speak to me except
the Swazi question, and upon this he put his views
very frankly and forcibly before me.

" We feel," he said, " that we have a right to
Swaziland. It belonged to us before England took
the Transvaal. Had the Transvaal remained English,
Swaziland would have remained an integral part
of the country. Because the Transvaal was given
back to the Dutch England separated the two and
retained the annex. Is it of any use to her ? None ! "

He recapitulated the arguments arising from the
geographical position of the Swazi country, and the
great difficulty, amounting almost to impossibility, of
approaching it from any English frontier.

" The Amatonga swamps and the Lebombo
mountains give it to us. I have only to refer you
to the report of your own Commissioner, Sir Francis
de Winton, for our arguments. I desire no better
statement of our case. He shows you what is the

iv LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 51

truth, that not only it ought to be ours, but, as a
matter of fact, it already is ours in all but name.
We hold all the valuable concessions, and we have
all the practical expenses of administration. The
right to build railways, the roads, the posts, the
telegraphs — all State rights are in our hands. You
could not take these over without incurring an
expenditure much greater than they involve to us,
because to us Swaziland, surrounded as it is on three
sides by the Transvaal, represents merely an exten-
sion of our own system ; to you it would represent
the creation of a separate system at many hundreds
of miles from your nearest base. We are glad for
the sake of our own people to do what we do for it
under present circumstances.

" The grazing rights are all held and enjoyed by
Boers, who naturally desire to remain under their
own Government. The natives look to us, and are
constantly asking to be taken under our protection.
Historically, geographically, administratively, it is
ours. All this being so — admitted so by English
as well as by Dutch statements of the case — you
will understand the strong feeling with which the
Dutch people asks, ' Why is it kept from us ? ' It
is kept by right of the strongest, not to do yourselves
good, but to do us harm. Well, if we were dangerous
to you the argument might have some force. But
who are we? What can we do? Can we rival
England ? Can we even injure England ? You are
afraid to give us a seaport ! Can our two or three
ships upon the sea upset the balance of the first
Navy of the world ? England, who has everything
to gain by working with us ! Show me what it is
that she fears from us ? "

52 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA iv

I suggested the possibility of some future Pre-
sident of the Transvaal seeking to ally himself with
a foreign Power, and to introduce a foreign influence
into South Africa.

" With England surrounding us on three sides by
land, with English railways able to place English
troops upon our frontier, with English ships upon
the sea ? Impossible ! The work of England and
the Transvaal in South Africa is the same work."
Clasping his hands vigorously, he turned to me,
" We ought to be working together thus," showing
the interlaced fingers and palms pressed one to
another. " Instead we are doing this " — and he
struck one forefinger across the other — " hindering,
not helping, the development which is good alike for
all. You think that if I had a port I might give
encouragement and preference to foreigners. It is
nonsense ! England, if she will but treat me fairly,
shall have the preference always. I personally
sympathise with her, because she is the only country
which has the same religious spirit as the Transvaal.
But if it were not so I must, for reasons of interest,
still give her every preference. I give you my word
that I ask nothing better than to work with England
as a younger brother might work with his elder. I
desire to be in amity and in profitable relations with
the greatest power in South Africa, but I will not
work with her as a slave. If I would I could not.
Our spirit as a people is too much like the English
spirit. It is stronger than us ; it masters any
advantage that we might gain, and forces us to
maintain our independence."

He spoke with a rugged emotion, which had its
own peculiar force, and from all that I have been

iv LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 53

able to learn his representation of the feeling of the
people is strictly true. An essential difference
between the Old Transvaal and the New Transvaal
is that the Old Transvaal is ready, if necessary, to
fight, and the New Transvaal is not. " And now
can you wonder," he continued, " that4 we feel sore
when we find that a Government as strong and
prosperous as the English Government, a Govern-
ment with which all our best interests incline us to
work harmoniously, can condescend to trick and
quibble with us, and time after time take the
advantage of our mutual agreements, yet hold back
the price for which we made them ? "

This is not the place in which to attempt an
exposition of the whole Swazi question, but in order
that the feeling of President Kruger and his people
may be understood, it is necessary to indicate very
briefly the course of its later developments. The
convention of 1884 bound both England and the
Transvaal to respect the independence of Swaziland.
The same convention bound the Transvaal not to
enlarge its northern border. No measures were
taken to enforce the observance of these conditions,
and, as a matter of fact, the Boers of the Transvaal
spread both into Swaziland and across the Limpopo
northwards, where they explored and made treaties
with the chiefs.

When the British South Africa Company obtained
its charter it became necessary to take note of the
informal extension of Dutch influence to the north.
Swaziland was at the same time rapidly falling into
anarchy. Sir Francis deWinton was sent to Swazi-
land, and made his report upon the condition of
affairs. It was informally understood that it would

54 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA iv

be an arrangement satisfactory to all sides if Swazi-
land were handed over to the Transvaal, and in
return the Transvaal should renounce any advantage
which it might have obtained under treaties with
native chiefs towards the north, where it should give
all its influence and support to the chartered com-
pany. The arrangement was not carried out. Pre-
sident Kruger was informed that it was not con-
sidered desirable that Swaziland . should pass
immediately under the sole sway of the Republic,
and the present system of joint jurisdiction was
temporarily established.

It will be remembered that opinion in England
was at that time very much divided as to the ulti-
mate destination of Swaziland. Its cession to the
Transvaal was advocated in the Press as late as the
month of February of 1890. It is not surprising
that the Government of the Transvaal, fresh from the
impression of Sir Francis de Winton's report, believed
that at the expiration of the term fixed for the
temporary government the country would be formally
transferred to it. At a meeting between the Presi-
dent and the High Commissioner at Blignaut's Pont
in March this hope was destroyed. A draft con-
vention, which reaffirmed the independence of the
Swazi people, was reluctantly accepted by President
Kruger, subject to the approval of his Council. The
Council refused to ratify his acceptance, and by the
middle of the year the position had become so
strained that war was on the point of breaking out.
Rifle practice became a regular institution among the
Boers in Swaziland. An English police force was
understood to be in readiness to cross the frontier.
Natives were preparing to range themselves upon

iv LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 55

either side. It was at this crisis that Mr. Hofmeyr
was induced to undertake his mission to Pretoria as
special agent of Her Britannic Majesty.

Mr. Hofmeyr has rendered many services to the
Empire. None is deserving of more grateful recogni-
tion than that which he rendered by saving us in the
summer of 1 890 from another African campaign.
War would not only have put an end with its first
shot to the policy of conciliation between the Dutch
and English inhabitants of South Africa, to which
Mr. Hofmeyr has consecrated the labours of his own
public life ; it would have been disastrous to the
material development of the country, and have thrown
back for, perhaps, another generation the chances of
that peaceable expansion which is the complement
of conciliation.

It is probable that the English public will never
realise all that it owes him in this respect, because it
can never know how close and real the peril was. He
arrived in Pretoria in the last days of June. He had
to achieve the difficult and delicate task of negotiat-
ing the acceptance of a distasteful convention, in the
provisions of which it must have been well known
from his public utterances upon the subject that he
did not himself heartily concur. He succeeded by
force of the same directness of purpose and simplicity
of action which have made his name respected in all
camps of politicians in the colony. He took the
convention himself as a compromise. He induced
the Transvaal Government to accept it in the same
spirit. Diplomacy would have been useless. He
laid it aside and spoke the plain truth to the Presi-
dent. He put him face to face with the consequences
of war. He pointed out to him that England could

56 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA iv

not afford to have another Majuba, and that war
must mean nothing less than the wiping of the
Transvaal off the map. The arguments of sentiment
were ruthlessly met by arguments of fact. At the
same time he admitted the strength of the Dutch
case, and the Government of Pretoria was given to
understand that if the proposed arrangement were
temporarily accepted a modification of it in the direc-
tion desired by the Transvaal would afterwards be
favourably entertained by Her Majesty's Government.

The understanding was entered into verbally, and
a memorandum of it was embodied in the third clause
of an authorised communication which Mr. Hofmeyr
made to President Kruger on 1 7th July. The word-
ing of the clause is as follows : " Her Majesty's
Government will be prepared, when the joint Govern-
ment is established and concession claims are settled,
to consider such questions as the Government of the
South African Republic may bring before it with a
desire to meet the wishes of the South African
Republic as far as possible." The Dutch Govern-
ment, having verbally explained that the question
which they would bring before Her Majesty's Govern-
ment would be the cession of Swaziland, were anxious
to give weight to this communication by inserting it
as an article of the convention. This was refused
by Mr. Hofmeyr on the ground that in his letter of
17th July " the Dutch Government already possessed
the written promise of Her Majesty's Government,
and that should be accepted as sufficient guarantee
that the obligations will be acknowledged."

The Dutch Blue Book which contains this corre-
spondence contains also a further despatch from the
High Commissioner, in which he guarantees the

iv LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 57

signature of Mr. Hofmeyr as binding. The conven-
tion was signed at Pretoria on the 2nd of August.
The Transvaal obtained under its terms the right to
acquire a seaport at Kosi Bay, and bound itself to
abstain from any attempt to extend its frontier to
the north.

These details are a little tedious, but necessary,
in order to show the ground upon which the Govern-
ment of the Transvaal base the very sore and bitter
feeling that is entertained. There may be, of course,
a difference of opinion as to how much was conceded
by the verbal understanding that underlay the claim
in question. There can be no doubt of the con-
struction which the Dutch Government puts upon
it. " This," President Kruger said to me in summing
up the situation, u is how we regard the matter.
Great Britain, in the person of her representative,
refused to enter into a bond with us, but gave us
the word of a gentleman. We accepted that word.
We fulfilled our part of the bargain upon trust, and
the word has not been kept. We have no redress.
There is nothing in the bond to show what our ex-
pectations were, but the Swazi question now bars
the way to all hearty co-operation with English
schemes — first, by the irritation which it causes;
secondly, by the fact that so long as that which we
hold to be a promise is unredeemed it is not possible
to put faith in any promise made by England.
Treaties are in the nature of things invalidated
beforehand."

To this it may be replied that there is evidently a
misunderstanding as to their conception of what the
British Government undertook to do, and as for the rest
the convention of 1 890 gives them practically all they

58 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA iv

want. It recognises the principal concessions which
they hold ; it leaves them undisturbed in the posses-
sion of their grazing rights ; it gives them power to
acquire a seaport, and agrees to recognise the sove-
reignty of the South African Republic in respect of
land purchased from the native rulers of the coast
for the purpose of constructing a railway to the sea.
They have the nut. Why are they so anxious for
the nutshell ? I venture to put the argument the
other way. Since we have given them the nut, why
do we quarrel for the nutshell ? Every solid advan-
tage which it was once feared to grant has been
conceded. All that remains to us is an expensive
and irksome responsibility for an unhealthy country,
into which, in the event of a disturbance, there is, in
Sir Hercules Robinson's words, no entrance for our
troops but by balloon. Is this worth retaining at
the cost of a standing irritation between ourselves
and an otherwise friendly neighbour ? The English
situation in the Transvaal is good enough. Suppose
the construction of a harbour. Suppose the creation
of a navy. Suppose every form of satisfactory de-
velopment in the Dutch Republic. Who will benefit
by it?

If I have succeeded in these two letters in showing
anything it must be that we have only to maintain
friendly relations with the Transvaal, and there is no
gain of hers which will not be also a gain of ours.
There is no reason why we should wish to overpower
her Government or to cramp her growth. Our
interests are in the best sense united, and if we can
but pocket old-fashioned red rags, and confine our-
selves to the development of industrial and other
enterprise in which the lead is granted to us without

iv LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 59

a question, the next generation of Englishmen will
have no reason to complain of the situation which
will have been created for them in South Africa.
What English supremacy demands is not the de-
struction of other Governments nor the suppression
of other individualities. There is room for all these
under her wing. It is railway development, customs
union, gradual modification of other conditions which
now impede the current of expansion, above all, an
increased white population. Political convulsion can
only hinder the attainment of these ends, and, if the
day has not yet arrived in which our swords may
be safely beaten into ploughshares, South Africa can
claim to have reached at least a preliminary stage
in which the steam-engine has become a more
effective instrument of empire than the cannon.

V

Bloemfontein.

As the train rolls over the monotonous stretches
of veldt which lie between Bloemfontein and the
frontier of the Orange Free State, you have time to
meditate upon the changes which are likely to be
produced in such a country as this by the introduc-
tion of modern means of locomotion. From sunrise
to sunset the prospect remains the same. On all
sides a yellow plain of grass, overhead a blue plain
of sky, not a tree, not an eminence of any kind to
break the distant meeting line, only here and there
between the two a swarm of locusts, fluttering snow-
white if the sun be upon them, and here and there
ant-heaps in regular rows, which look as if they had
been prepared for some agricultural purpose. Cattle
browse upon the grass. Occasionally there is a
farm, still more rarely a village. From time to time
the course of a distant stream may be traced by the
greener line of herbage and brushwood which it
marks upon the plain. Otherwise through the long
hours there is no change. The eyes open in the
morning upon the prospect on which they closed at
night.

The distances, with nothing to mark them, seem
immense, and imagination recoils from the endeavour

v LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 61

even to conceive the patience required for traversing
them without the aid of steam. Yet there is some-
thing in the mild wide landscape which reminds you
irresistibly of the " trekker " in his white -tented
wagon whom you passed at the beginning of your
journey in the Karoo. Here you feel is the goal to
which he travelled ; it is the true home of the ox
wagon. Here the animals can obtain fodder and
the driver meat. Here there is room for every man
to put the wide space which he desires between him-
self and his neighbour. Here is essentially the
Dutchman's country.

The Orange Free State is absolutely an inland
State. The shortest distance that lies between its
frontier and the Indian Ocean is 150 miles, and on
the other side the Orange River, after it leaves the
border, has still a course of 500 miles to run before
it reaches the Atlantic. The mountains of Natal,
Basutoland, and the eastern districts of Cape Colony
enclose it on the south and east, and shut from it
even so much as a sea-wind. The veldt is its only
ocean, and this until two years ago had been crossed
by no vessel but a wagon.

From the foot of the mountains the Free State
slopes gently towards the north — that is, towards the
equator and the sun. It always maintains an aver-
age elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, and
it contains within its lozenge-shaped frontier 72,000
square miles, or an area about a third of the size
of France, of scarcely broken plains which are swept
by the dry desert air. Its climate is hardly to be
matched throughout the world. In the absence of
salt water it is almost entirely surrounded by fresh
water. The Klip Vaal, Caledon and Orange Rivers

62 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA v

form a natural moat along at least five-sixths of its
boundary. Other small streams traverse it from
south to north. None of the land remains now un-
owned, but the population averages rather less than
two persons — one white and one black — to the square
mile, almost the whole of it being South African
born. With few exceptions, such as the diamonds
at Fauresmith, the minerals have not been worked.
It is a purely pastoral and agricultural State, and
the possibilities of development which lie before it
are practically untested. This is the history of all
internal States until easy means of communication
have been opened for them with the world, and at
Bloemfontein, which entered upon a new state of
being when the railway reached it eighteen months
ago, the question of communications is now regarded
as the question of supreme importance.

It does not need the memory of an old man to
recall the time when not only Bloemfontein but the
whole peninsula was without a single line of rail.
Thirty years ago private companies were only be-
ginning to grasp the necessity for developing the
country from the seaports, and the first South African
railway between Cape Town and Wellington was
not opened until 1863. Another line from Port
Elizabeth to Uitenhage was begun by a private
company, but when the Government took over the
railways in 1873 there were only 63 miles of rail-
way open in the country. Since that time more
than 2000 miles have been constructed, and the
traffic over them pays interest of 4 J per cent
upon a capital of £16,500,000. This is exclusive
of the railways of Natal, which do not yet form a
part of the Cape and Free State system.

v LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 63

The first policy of the Government after taking
over the existing lines was to push them from the
coast into the cultivated districts of the near neigh-
bourhood. The Cape Town line was advanced to
Beaufort, and the Port Elizabeth line to Cradock on
the one branch and Graaf Reinet upon the other,
before any decision was taken as to the ultimate
point of junction. A third port line was opened
from East London to King William's Town in 1877.
Brandy, wool, skins, and feathers were the principal
markets which the lines were designed to serve. It
was supposed that they would some day converge
upon a given point in the interior, but it was not
until the discovery of diamonds at Kimberley and
the addition of Griqualand West to the colonial
territory that the Kimberley trade leaped into sudden
importance, and Kimberley became the goal of all
the railways. A point of junction was chosen at De
Aar for the Cape Town and Cradock lines, and a
main line was pushed on from there to the Orange
River, whence, in consequence of Sir Charles Warren's
expedition in 1885, it was continued into Kimberley.
The East London line was in the meantime ex-
tended to Aliwal North, upon the borders of the
Free State. Thus the system within the colony
itself was completed, and local opposition on the
part of the more conservative farming population,
which was at one time strong, became a thing of
the past.

There was, however, no connection between the
colony and the neighbouring Republics, and dis-
coveries of gold in the Transvaal were already, by
the time the railway had reached Kimberley, be-
ginning to draw trade as the diamonds had done.

64 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA v

All eyes looked towards Johannesburg. The question
for the directors of South African railway construc-
tion was how to tap its trade at the nearest point.
In 1882 a concession had been granted by the
Government of the Transvaal to the Netherlands
South African Railway Company to construct a rail-
way from the borders of Portuguese territory on the
eastern coast into Pretoria, but, in consequence of
difficulties with Colonel M'Murdo, the concessionaire
for the construction of the line through Portuguese
territory to the sea at Delagoa Bay, nothing had
been done. The Transvaal, therefore, was without
any railway of its own, and seemed likely to remain
so for an indefinite period. The prize lay between
the two English colonies, and Natal had already
built a line to Ladysmith, about 190 miles inland.

Railway extension passed at this point from a
question of local advantage to a question of South
African politics. All parties desired it. The
division of opinion was upon the manner in which it
should be carried out. In consequence of the dead-
lock which had taken place in his own railway
extension in the Transvaal, President Kruger refused
his consent to any immediate extension of colonial
lines into his territory. He could not, of course,
forbid either Natal or the Cape to extend their rail-
ways if they chose to the extreme limits of their
territory and his. He could only lay before them
his not unnatural dislike to see the trade of his own
country taken away before his railway was con-
structed, and he asked them as a neighbourly act to
give him a fair chance of competing for it by waiting
until the difficulties with the Portuguese part of his
line had been got over. He put his proposal in the

v - LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 65

form of a request that Natal would remain at Lady-
smith and the Cape at Kimberley until the Nether-
lands Railway Company got upon the high veldt
120 miles from Delagoa Bay.

It is important to remember that Johannesburg,
which is still, as it was then, the goal of the South
African railway system, is 6000 feet above the sea.
From whatever point of the coast it is reached this
ascent has to be made. On the Delagoa Bay line,
which is geographically the shortest of them all,
there are portions where the gradient is 1 in
20, and to get the line upon the high veldt was
equivalent to achieving the most difficult as well as
the most costly part of the construction.

Natal, it may be briefly said, disregarded
President Kruger's wish, and pushed on her Lady-
smith line to Charlestown upon the Transvaal
frontier. In the Cape Parliament in 1888 Sir
Gordon Sprigg's Government proposed a scheme
of extending each of the three Cape lines as far as
they could be carried to the borders respectively of
the Free State and the Transvaal. The part of the
scheme which involved extension to the Transvaal
frontier was strenuously opposed by Mr. Hofmeyr
and the majority of his party, who declared them-
selves in favour of respecting President Kruger's
wish, and of carrying on the Cape railway system
by extension into the Free State. The scheme
was carried, but in the following session, in defer-
ence, it was supposed, to the drift of the general
election which took place between the sessions of
1888-89, Sir Gordon Sprigg abandoned the exten-
sion to the Transvaal frontier and adopted the
policy indicated by Mr. Hofmeyr. He concluded a

F

66 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA v

Customs Union with the Free State and entered
into a convention to build the railway as far as
Bloemfontein.

This convention was subject to an agreement
entered into between the Presidents of the two
Republics at Potchefstroom that the railway should
not be carried further than Bloemfontein without
the consent of President Kruger. About the same
time the British South Africa Company got its
charter, and the Kimberley line was, by arrangement,
extended to Vryburg. Sir Gordon Sprigg's Ministry
was defeated in the early part of the session of
1890 upon a scheme of railway development within
the Colony, and the present Government took office.
The Vryburg and Bloemfontein extensions were
both of them completed in December of 1890, thus
creating the basis of the two future trunk lines of
South Africa — the one from Cape Town to join the
Netherlands railway line in Pretoria, and so gain
an issue by Delagoa Bay, connecting as it goes the
two Republics, and possibly some day Natal ; the
other within British territory, to push up probably
by degrees as far as British territory may extend
throughout the continent, and to gather on its way
all branch lines running east and west, beginning
with the line about to be constructed from Beira to
Fort Salisbury.

The destiny of the Vryburg line is still a question
of the future ; the Bloemfontein line has fulfilled in
great part the intention with which it was con-
structed. The opening of the railway in 1890 gave
the Free State a new standing in South Africa.
Its wishes and its affairs became at once of more
importance, and every one now sees, what in 1888

v LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 67

Mr. Hofmeyr alone was astute enough to recognise,
that its influence with the Transvaal was worth
winning. Incidentally the result achieved in this
matter of railway extension may be taken as one of
the fruits of the policy of conciliation. While the
Natal railway still remains at Charlestown, 180
miles from the point which it desires to reach, the
Cape and Free State railway is on the point of
entering Johannesburg. A Cape railway alone
might have remained, like the Natal railway, to this
day upon the frontier of the Transvaal at Fourteen
Streams, further even than Charlestown from
Johannesburg, for we have not done much to dis-
pose President Kruger towards friendly concessions
to us personally.

We owe our present favourable position in large
measure to our friendship with the Free State.
President Reitz was naturally desirous of obtaining
for the Free State agriculturists as large a share as
possible of the produce trade with Johannesburg,
and the extension was scarcely completed to
Bloemfontein when President Kruger was induced
to sanction a further development through the Free
State to the frontier of the Transvaal at Vereeniging,
a distance of only 50 miles from Johannesburg.

In December of 1891, in return for a loan made
by the Cape Government to the Netherlands Railway
Company for the purpose of constructing the line
from the frontier to Johannesburg and Pretoria,'
running powers into both those towns were granted
to the trains of the Cape and Free State line. The
extension to the frontier was opened on the 26th of
May of this year, and it is expected that the first
train will run into Johannesburg and Pretoria in the

68 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA v

middle of September. In the meantime the Delagoa
Bay line has advanced to Nels Spruit upon the high
veldt, about 150 miles from Delagoa Bay, and
Natal, seeing that the way to the Transvaal lies,
after all, through the Free State, has also extended
her railway to Harrismith, upon the Free State
border.

It has been a sharp struggle, in which the sagacity
and the command of capital of the Cape have estab-
lished her position as the premier State of South
Africa ; and the only matter of regret is that the
rivalry which it has engendered between two English
colonies should continue. Even this, perhaps, is
not altogether a matter of regret, for rivalry, under
judicious guidance, may tone down to wholesome
competition, by which in the long run the public of
the South will benefit. One of the conditions of
the Cape agreement with the Transvaal is a personal
promise from President Kruger that no better terms
than those which have been granted to the Cape
shall be given to any other Power which extends
its railways into the Republic. This has been
construed into an unfair and unfriendly attempt to
debar Natal from extending its lines in due course.
As a matter of fact, it is not so. It is nothing
more than a parallel to the most favoured nation
clause of any treaty, and was necessary for purposes
of legitimate self-protection.

The immediate effect with regard to the extension
of the Natal line from Charlestown would, however,
be to weight goods carried over it with the same
rate per mile that they pay upon the Cape railway
from the point at which it enters the territory of the
Republic. This rate is 6d. per ton. The distance

v LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 69

from the point of entrance of the Cape railway at
Vereeniging to Johannesburg is 52 miles. The
total cost for each ton of goods is therefore 26s.
The distance from Charlestown to Johannesburg is
180 miles. The total cost for each ton of goods
would be 90s., and this, added to the cost of carrying
them to Charlestown over a line of which the
gradients are very steep, is practically prohibitive.
The Cape line could always deliver the same goods
from Port Elizabeth or East London at a lower
price.

The scheme of a Charlestown extension is, there-
fore, likely for the present to be abandoned, but the
Harrismith extension through the Free State remains.
Here Natal would, of course, desire to strike by the
shortest route across the Free State and join the
existing railway at Vereeniging. But the Free State
had to have its say. Its voice in such matters now
has weight. It has obtained the market which it
required for its own produce at Johannesburg. It
can afford to wait for further developments, but if a
railway is to be constructed over its territory, it
must be run for the purposes of the Free State as
well as of Natal. In order to do this, it must
traverse the agricultural districts of the east and
strike the existing railway not further north than
Kronstad — that is, with 90 miles to run upon
the Cape and Free State rails. In other words,
it must become a branch of the existing trunk
line.

The Natal Government has not yet expressed
its intentions with regard to its future course. It
had been hoped that the meeting of President
Reitz and Sir Charles Mitchell at the late opening

70 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA v

of the extension to Harrismith would have resulted
in an understanding upon these and other questions
between the two Governments, but the impression
brought back from the meeting appears to be that
Natal is waiting to watch the course of further
developments in the Transvaal before coming to
any decision. In the meantime it has shown a
keen determination to compete by train and wagon
with the train service of the Cape, and in order
to do so it has celebrated the opening of the
Harrismith extension by a reduction of its carry-
ing rates. The Cape has retaliated by a corre-
sponding reduction.

I have not yet been in Natal, and, therefore,
wish to say as little as possible about the attitude
of that colony in the matter. This, however, may
be said without fear of contradiction, that Natal
has depended largely upon the carrying trade for
the security of her financial position. Any cir-
cumstances tending to destroy that trade { would
constitute a serious misfortune, and, in fighting
against the advantage which the Cape has gained
by pushing its railway into Johannesburg, Natal
is struggling to retain what it conceives to be the
natural advantage of its own geographical position.
Durban, it contends, is nearer to Johannesburg than
East London. Therefore, it must be able to put
goods into Johannesburg more cheaply than East
London can. Here comes in again the fact, all
important when tariffs have to be fixed, that
Johannesburg is 6000 feet above the sea.

The reply of Cape authorities to the Natal
argument is that, although geographically nearer,
Durban is topographically further than the Cape

v LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 71

ports from the seat of the Transvaal trade. It
is not always shorter to go up the face of a
mountain than round the shoulder, and when loco-
motive power has to be paid for and interest
calculated upon the expenses of railway construc-
tion it will be found, they say, that neither is
it cheaper. Twenty miles of railway through the
Drakensberg mountains, which the Natal lines have
to cross, cost more than 100 miles across the
Free State.

I have no personal knowledge of the financial
position of the Natal railways. The Cape railways
contribute, as the Treasurer - General pointed out
in his Budget speech, little less than half the
public revenue. The capital which is invested in
them represents three - fifths of the whole debt of
the colony, and they bring in a net profit of
.£4:13:4 upon every hundred pounds. Together
with the Customs, which their development tends
largely to increase, they are estimated to yield this
year £3,640,000 of the total revenue of £4,730,480,
and in connection with their effect in increasing
trade, and thereby adding to the Customs revenue,
it may be interesting to note that the tonnage
of vessels leaving and entering Cape ports has
increased in the fifteen years since the construction
of railways began in earnest to nearly seven times
what it was before. The figures of the imports
and exports for successive years are scarcely less
satisfactory. The total for 1886, taken together,
was £11,277,344. The total for last year, as
given in the Treasurer's speech, exclusive of goods
imported for the use of the Colonial and Imperial
Governments, was £18,303,428. These figures

72 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA v

have a double interest They not only demon-
strate the solid basis of the statement made by
the Commissioner of Crown Lands in presenting
his railway agreements to the House, to the effect
that he has a good margin to come and go upon
for working profit, and that if there is to be a war
of rates between the Cape Colony and Natal it
is not the Cape which will go to the wall, but
they also show the very important place which the
development of railways holds in the prosperity of
the colony, and the security which they give to
holders of colonial stock.

Assuming the position of the Natal railways
to be relatively as good — and as to this I have
no information beyond the published statement
that they pay an interest of £4 : 12 : 7 per
cent upon the invested capital of between three
and four millions — it is still evident that in case
of a commercial war, where the opposing hosts are
represented by 16,000,000 on the one side and
4,000,000 on the other, the 16,000,000 are
likely to win. In the trials of their strength
both may, however, suffer considerably, and as they
are neither of them private commercial enterprises,
but Government undertakings — that is to say,
really the property of the taxpayers of each colony
— the public has not the selfish interest that it
otherwise might have in seeing them ruin them-
selves for the consumers' benefit. Still less would
it be economically sound that they should ruin
themselves for the benefit of the Transvaal.

The proposal which this condition of things leads
up to is that a railway union should be formed
between the South African colonies and States, and

v LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 73

the tariffs become a matter of mutual agreement.
The Netherlands Railway Company is in every-
thing but name the Transvaal Government. There
is no reason, therefore, why this railway should not
be included in the union. The differing interests of
the uniting States would, it is contended, be a
sufficient guarantee that rates would be kept down
to a reasonably low figure, and they would be fixed
in a fair proportion to working expenses, so that
each Government would still have the incentive to
good management which is at present supplied by
open competition. The whole is simply a question
of the distribution of taxes.

The result aimed at by the advocates of the
railway union is to be able to maintain the present
system of indirect taxation through the railway rates,
which has been found to be a cheap and convenient
form of collecting revenue. The argument of their
opponents is that to use railway rates as a form of
taxation is to undo with one hand what has been
done by the other, and to stultify the development
which the construction of railways is intended to
promote. An excise tax and a tax on diamonds
are both of them thrown in the teeth of the Cape
Government when it argues the advantage of railway
rates. Even to touch these questions is to show
what a wide field of discussion the subject opens.
As the matter stands at present it is believed that
when existing sources of friction have been removed
between the English Government and the Dutch
Republic the Transvaal will be willing to enter the
union. A provisional basis of rates has already
been discussed and informally agreed to. The
intentions of Natal are not known either at Bloem-

74 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA v

fontein or in Cape Town. It is presumable that if
she is about to get responsible government the
question will be left for a responsible Ministry to
decide.

I had hoped, in writing from this place, to be
able to enter also into the question of Customs
Union, which hangs so closely upon railway de-
velopment and is just now a matter of the keenest
interest to the Free State. My letter is already so
long that I must confine myself to indicating in the
briefest possible manner how in this matter, as well
as in the matter of railways, the Free State has
within the last two or three years begun to make
its influence felt in the South African Councils.

Having no port of its own, the Orange Free
State has always been in the hands of its neighbours
with regard to the Customs dues which they choose
to levy upon goods passing through to its borders.
In 1889 it entered, as I have mentioned, into a
Customs Union with the Cape, and agreed to a com-
mon tariff of 1 2-J- ad valorem, or 17 per cent upon
rateable articles. Of this sum it receives three-
fourths, and one-fourth is kept by the Cape for transit
dues. The arrangement has been on the whole
extremely advantageous to the Orange Free State
and has added something like a hundred thousand
a year to its revenue. But Natal approves as little
of the Cape Customs dues as of Cape railway rates.
Goods pass through its ports at an average of from
5 to 7 per cent less than they pay at the Cape.
The inhabitants of the north-eastern districts of the
Free State, who are in the habit of drawing their
supplies across the border from Natal, now find
themselves obliged to pay the higher rate fixed by

v LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 75

the Customs Union. They naturally object, and as
they have a strong representation in the Volksraad
of the Free State they are able to make their objec-
tions strongly felt.

The Free State is thus to some extent divided
between itself, and the Government, unwilling to
resign the advantage which it has already gained
from its participation in the union, is anxious to see
Natal join the bond and equalise the rates on the
basis, perhaps, of a slightly lower tariff all round. In
order to obtain this concession it might be willing to
concede something to Natal in the matter of railway
extension. Natal, however, has lately replied to the
overtures made by the Free State that she is not
disposed to enter, or even to meet in conference to
discuss, any Customs Union which does not include
the Transvaal. As her principal trade is with the
Transvaal this decision is not to be wondered at, and
the Government of the Free State is now endeavour-
ing to use its influence in Pretoria to overcome the
objections of President Kruger. The two Republics
have an agreement of their own which amounts to
free trade in local produce, but their trade relations
would be greatly simplified by the extension of the
union. The Free State has, therefore, everything to
gain by drawing the Transvaal into the South African
bond. Hence the interest taken here in the settle-
ment of the Swazi question and the resolution passed
not long ago by the Raad to make a representation
upon the subject to the Imperial Government.

VI

Maseru, Basutoland.

Perhaps the prettiest part of the Free State is that
which lies between Bloemfontein and the borders of
Basutoland. No train at present crosses it, and in
order to reach Maseru it is necessary in the first
instance to drive to Ladybrand upon the Free State
frontier. The distance is about 80 miles, and the
post-cart, which leaves Bloemfontein at five in the
morning, reaches Ladybrand at six in the evening.
It is a canvas-tented vehicle on springs, drawn by
eight horses, and is much lighter and, on the whole,
more comfortable than the coaches of the Transvaal.
The driver handles a whip like a salmon-rod with
much dexterity, and keeps the eight horses in a per-
petual hand gallop, of which the speed increases
rather than slackens when a river has to be crossed,
or any specially bad piece of road to be got over.

The incidental effect upon the passengers is to
cause them to make many involuntary excursions
into the roof of the wagon, and the pleasure of the
drive depends not a little upon the amount of activity
with which you are prepared to play the part of
shuttlecock to the battledore of the seat. It is not
an exercise for the nervous, and the most nimble
may lay their account with being moderately bruised

vi LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 77

by the end of the day ; but, with due allowance for
this drawback, the experience, as a whole, is not
disagreeable. You are not all the time in river-beds
nor on bad pieces of road, nor even on pebbly veldt,
where loose gravel flies into your eyes, and if you
have the fortunate chance that I had to be alone
with the mail bags, and to have the canvas sides of
the wagon looped up all round, so as to give an
unobstructed view of the country as you pass through,
you may spend some very enjoyable hours.

We began our journey by starlight, but the sun
rose over the veldt about two hours after we had
left Bloemfontein, and by the time the light had
fully spread we were already entering an undulating
country where hill-tops began to wreathe the horizon.
Within four hours of Bloemfontein the veldt took the
aspect of a yellow land upon which a child's Noah's
ark had been set out. Herds of cattle and horses
and flocks of sheep, with here and there a quaint
figure wrapped in a blanket watching them, were
scattered thickly over the landscape. There were no
trees, no hedges, no dividing lines of any kind except
those made passingly by the shadows of the clouds.
There were no villages in the European sense, but
from time to time a slope was dotted with the round
and melon-shaped huts of a native settlement. The
herds were of great extent, and must have repre-
sented a very considerable amount of wealth, but if
the country had been swept of its cattle nothing of
the value of half-a-crown would have been left.

As we drove on we met with more evidence of
cultivation. Farm lands and gardens began to take
the place of the pasturage, and by two o'clock we
were in a district where maize stalks were still stand-

78 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vi

ing and the upland edges waved with corn. It was
a peculiarly lovely day, bright, cold, and breezy,
with clouds drifting across a dazzling sky. The
hill -tops, which caught every colour of the rainbow
from pink and pearl to a blue that was almost black,
seemed at last to girdle completely a spreading
garden of gold and green. It was the grain district
of the Orange Free State which was taken from the
Basutos after their last war, and is still known with-
out any scruple of delicacy by the name of the
Conquered Territory.

Every hour which brought us nearer to Basuto-
land gave more picturesqueness to the landscape.
Late in the afternoon the road began to wind sharply
up and down hill, and sunset found us on a high
ridge with a magnificent view of the Maluti range
spread out before us. " There," said the driver, with
a comprehensive sweep of the salmon rod, " there is
Basutoland, and there, and there, and there. All
the mountains are Basutoland."

The horizon was filled from edge to edge with
mountain -tops. Some of the higher peaks were
already tipped with snow, and rose white and sharp
from the ghostly grays of the eastern twilight ;
towards the west others were glowing red and purple
under the reflections of the sky. It is the Switzer-
land of South Africa, a country of rocks and water-
falls and fertile valleys, and it bears in extent the
same proportion to the Switzerland of Europe that
the Orange Free State bears to France. It has an
area of 10,293 miles, of which the greater part is
mountain. Some day when the farmers of Lady-
brand get their grain line to Bloemfontein and the
manner of approach is easier, it will probably become

vi LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 79

the happy hunting ground of tourists in search of
health and picturesque scenery. At present it is
simply the home of one of the most promising of
the native races of the continent.

Its history is not altogether unworthy of the
geographic parallel, for if Basutoland is our Switzer-
land, the Basutos may fairly claim to be the Swiss
of South Africa. They have defended their moun-
tain fastnesses again and again with success against
troops superior to them in armament and military
knowledge, but they are not naturally warlike ; they
are, on the contrary, a peaceful, hardy, and in-
dustrious people. They number at present about
218,000, and the resident Europeans, including
teachers, missionaries, and Government officials, do
not reach the total of 600.

It will be remembered that after the last war,
which resulted in the disannexation of Basutoland
from the Cape Colony, a majority of the Basuto
chiefs willingly accepted the direct rule of the
Imperial Government, and in the month of March
1884 Sir Marshall Clarke took up the position
which he now holds of Resident Commissioner. In
order to appreciate what he has done, it is necessary
to recall briefly the situation with which he had to
deal.

He found the local chiefs fighting between them-
selves. Those who had been in favour of the Cape
colonial connection were hard pressed, and fearing to
be driven for refuge into the Orange Free State.
Others were rebelling against the authority of their
own paramount chief Letsia ; others, again, against
the district chiefs whom Letsia had appointed. A
section of the people led by Masupha openly rejected

So LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vi

the authority of the Imperial Government, and
declined to pay hut tax. Quarrels between herds-
men led frequently to the " eating up " — that is, the
wholesale destruction or sweeping away — of the
cattle of an offending village.

Stock thefts were common upon the borders of
the Orange Free State, and gave rise to violations
of the Free State territory. A chief whose territory
had been annexed by the Orange Free State had
taken refuge in Basutoland with the avowed inten-
tion of exciting the sympathy of the native chiefs
and stirring up difficulties upon the frontier. Fear
had been aroused in the Free State that the Basuto
natives would unite in an attempt to repossess them-
selves by force of arms of the conquered territory,
and commandoes were on foot. To add to the dis-
quiet a rumour spread during the first months of the
new administration that the troops which were being
raised for Sir Charles Warren's expedition to Bechu-
analand were really intended to be directed against
Basutoland for the purpose of abolishing the power
of the chiefs, and Maseru, the capital, and Mafeteng,
another of the English stations, were in consequence
watched by large armed detachments of natives.

Side by side with all this incitement to violence
the drink traffic was flourishing. Natives were every-
where leaving their fields to flock to the numerous
canteens, and the Resident Commissioner's first
report reckons among the " great difficulties " of
the situation the fact that "since the rebellion
the majority of the chiefs have become habitual
drunkards." It was a position which has repeated
itself again and again in native communities. War
had temporarily demoralised a whole people, and

vi LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 81

Basutoland was on the verge of falling into a con-
dition of anarchy and degradation which would have
rendered it a source of danger and disturbance, not
only to its immediate neighbours, but to South
Africa. Surrounded as it is by native populations
in Natal, Zululand, and the Transkei, it needed little
more to become a leaven of disorder, of which the
effect would have been injuriously felt from the
Zambesi to the Cape.

Sir Marshall Clarke's achievement has been to
avert this peril without the employment of force,
and to bring Basutoland in the course of eight years
from the position in which he found it to the posi-
tion which it at present holds as a centre of loyalty
and order among native populations, and a source
of supply of food and labour to the neighbouring
States. The output of grain, cattle, and native pro-
duce from Basutoland last year reached the value of
£250,000, and passes were issued to between 50,000
and 60,000 natives who went to work in the mines
of Kimberley and Johannesburg. The drink traffic
has been entirely stopped. For five years there has
been no fighting between the chiefs. The practice
of "eating up" cattle has been suppressed. Fair
trial has been substituted for the arbitrary and bar-
barous custom of " smelling out," or, in other words,
of torturing for witchcraft. Border disputes with
the Orange Free State have been arranged, the
frontier has been defined by a commission appointed
for the purpose, and a large portion of it has been
fenced. Roads are being made throughout Basuto-
land. Trading licences have increased in number.
Industrial and other schools are spreading, and free
dispensaries and cottage hospitals, which were at

G

82 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vi

first regarded with distrust and dislike, have come
into general use among the natives.

In 1 89 1 Basutoland entered the Customs Union.
This year it was connected by telegraph with the
Orange Free State. In other words, peace has been
substituted for war, and the customs of civilisation
are daily gaining ground. From a source of danger
the country has become a source of strength, and
the most satisfactory feature of the whole situation
is that the reforms which have been effected have
been carried out always with the concurrence and in
many cases through the agency of the chiefs.

I do not want to seem passingly to say that
Basutoland may never again become a source of
trouble or disturbance. Opinions differ too much
upon the subject of the apparent loyalty of the
actual chiefs, and native politics are too much com-
plicated by distant issues for any such prophecy to
be made. I only want, as far as it is possible in the
very short limits of a letter, to indicate what has
been done and the manner in which it has been
done. It is not often that a man sees his work
produce fruit under his hand as Sir Marshall Clarke
has done, and the seven very short annual reports in
which he catalogues the principal events of his ad-
ministration form, taken together, one of the most
interesting and instructive of the minor chapters of
English history.

The system upon which he has worked rejects
alike the theory that treats the native as a child
irresponsible for his acts and dispossessed of personal
rights and the theory which accepts him as a man
and a brother equal in all things to his white neigh-
bour. It deals with him as a man fully responsible

vi LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 83

for his acts, behind the white man in civilisation,
but subject to precisely the same laws of human
development, and it is based upon the principle that
to develop his self-respect and to make him a use-
ful member of society are almost synonymous terms.
It is the principle upon which the best educational
institutions for natives within the colony have
accomplished all their admirable work, and the
mission schools in Basutoland have contributed not
a little to the success of the political experiment.

The most important of these are, curiously
enough, not English. The French Protestant
mission of the Paris Evangelical Society, which has
for many years devoted its labours to the education
of the Basuto people, has 1 3 principal stations and
129 out-stations, with day schools scattered through
the country. It has nearly 8000 children upon its
ordinary school rolls, and has, besides these, about
700 young men in training either as teachers or in
industrial institutions where trades are taught.

At the principal station at Morija, which lies
within a four hours' drive of Maseru, and within half
an hour of the mountain kraal of Lerothodi, the
present paramount chief, there is a printing and
bookbinding establishment, where, on the occasion
of my visit, an edition of 3000 copies of a Sesuto
reading -book was under preparation entirely by
native printers and compositors. A fortnightly
paper, of which the name, being translated, means
The Little Light \ is also printed and published
here in Sesuto. It is written principally by native
contributors, and, far from experiencing any difficulty
in keeping it alive, the editor has to complain of
plethora of copy and want of space. It reaches, I

84 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vi

learned, the very respectable circulation of 800
copies. The Government printing is also done by
natives at Morija.

At Quthing, another of the English stations,
there is an industrial school, where stone-cutting,
masons' work, and carpentering are taught. At
Thaba Bosigo, the historic burying-place of the
chiefs, there is a school for girls, where, in addition
to elementary education, the pupils can learn needle-
work, cookery, and the ordinary domestic arts.
There are also excellent industrial schools for boys
and girls supported by the French Roman Catholic
mission at Roma, and there are some schools sup-
ported by the English Church. The value of them
all is that, whatever their system of teaching, they
are centres of civilisation, and achieve perhaps as
much by the unconscious influence as by deliberate
effort.

Every mission station that I visited had houses
built of brick and well-planted gardens. Each had
its church and schoolhouse, and it was noticeable
that the huts which surrounded them were of
distinctly higher grade than the huts of a purely
native settlement At Morija many were square,
and possessed of the luxury of windows and an
upright door. Some had chimneys. Three or four
that I entered had European furniture. One was
quite pretty, with blue-washed walls, chintz curtains,
and blue willow-patterned cups and dishes on a
shelf.

The step from an ordinary native hut to this is
very great, and represents an advance in develop-
ment of which the significance can hardly be
exaggerated. It means nothing less than the con-

vi LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 85

version of the native from the condition of loafing
savage to the condition of a labourer. This, if it
could become general, is the solution of the native
problem, and it is difficult to realise anywhere but
on the spot how much the missionaries contribute to
make it general. It is only, perhaps, in driving
about the mountains, visiting alternately chiefs and
mission stations, that it is possible to appreciate the
real and best work that they are doing. By induc-
ing the common people to adopt civilised customs,
they are giving them civilised wants and laying the
foundation of all civilised endeavour.

The great obstacle to the material development
of South Africa is everywhere declared to be the
scarcity of labour. With labour enough I was re-
peatedly told in the Transvaal we could do anything.
The question of questions is how to obtain it. Here
in the remote valleys of Basutoland, cultivated as
they are from edge to edge, an answer seems dimly
possible. Here a native population is at work.
Before long the difficulty will be that no more land
will remain to be taken up. Still the population is
increasing, and every year sends out larger numbers
to earn money beyond the borders. Basutoland
under orderly administration is becoming a labour
reserve. Why should not this be the case with all
native territories ? They are looked upon at present
as the cloud upon the South African horizon. If
they could by any means be converted into com-
munities of labourers, they would become, on the con-
trary, the natural pendant in South African prosperity
of the immense wealth which is waiting to be de-
veloped.

There are, of course, great difficulties in the way.

86 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vi

A question which has perplexed successive genera-
tions and given rise to so many bitter struggles is
not likely to settle itself hurriedly now merely
because its settlement becomes every day more
urgent. Yet there are certain conclusions that may,
I think, be fairly drawn from conditions which exist
now and have never existed in South Africa before.
The first of these is that the native question and the
labour question are rapidly merging themselves in
one, and are consequently engaging the attention of
two very different classes of minds. Men who have
never worked together before are likely to be found
in the future in cordial co-operation and to lend to
each other's schemes all the weight of combined
conviction. In coming from the Transvaal to Basuto-
land this impression is most striking.

For all practical purposes there are but two
questions which are of any real importance in the
South Africa of to-day. One is the material de-
velopment ; the other is the race question. Every-
thing which appears on the political field falls under
one heading or the other, and it may be taken as a
fair test of the value of any given measure how
much it helps the one without hindering the other.

Generally speaking, the problems of material de-
velopment enlist in their solution a different class of
energy from that which lends itself willingly to the
more abstract questions of race. In the Transvaal
the first, in Basutoland the second may be seen in
its typical expression, and both are at this moment
working towards exactly the same result. The men
who are most eagerly occupied in making their own
fortunes in Johannesburg are strongly of opinion
that, somehow or other, the native must be made to

vi LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 87

work. If wages are the means by which he can be
tempted, they are willing to pay him well. They
do not care in the least about him ; they care only
for the profit which they foresee for themselves from
the result, and within the limits which leave a divi-
dend he is welcome to what he wants. Their only
source of annoyance is that they cannot get as many
workmen as they want, and, if it would advance
matters, they would probably be ready to pay a
premium to every missionary, official, or philan-
thropist who turned a labourer into the market.

In Basutoland, for absolutely different reasons,
the object of all endeavour is the same. Here it is
felt that the true place of the native in the South
African community for generations to come will be
the place of a labourer. There is no finality in
politics, and there is no desire to limit his future
possibilities, but it is evident, in the opinion of his
best friends, that in his uneducated condition he has
not reached the average level of the labourer. He
must take the first step before he can be prepared
for those that follow, and industry must for a long
time to come be his religion. Here education is
doing what compulsory labour Bills have not yet
been found competent to effect, and a generation of
natives is growing up with requirements which can
only be satisfied by working.

As a labourer the native takes at once a new
place in the social scale. He is an element in the
development of the country. He becomes valuable
and will be valued accordingly. Seeing then that
he has himself everything to gain by filling the place
which the conditions of the country open to him,
that the need for his services will only increase as

88 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vi

the material development of the north goes on, and
that the labour question is the next great question
which is likely to engage the attention of South
African politicians of all schools, it does not seem
too much to hope that what is happening in the
Transvaal and Basutoland may be a type and fore-
runner of what will take place throughout South
Africa,

VII

King William's Town.

By whatever route you determine to descend from
the High Veldt of the interior to the southern coast,
you no sooner leave the crest of the high ground
behind you than you become aware of the softening
influence of the airs from the Indian Ocean. I
came down from De Aar Junction, which is the
meeting-point of the Eastern, Western, and Midland
railway system of the colony, to Port Elizabeth, and
from Port Elizabeth by sea to East London. The
descent is made in five great steps, through wild,
but no longer treeless, scenery. Mountain passes,
covered with euphorbias, flowering aloes, and aro-
matic herbage, alternate in succession with plateaux
that widen out to farm and pasture lands. In
places the rocky sides are aflame with scarlet
blossom, then there come long stretches of grass as
green as the meadows of Essex, and the low scrub
and bush of ostrich farms. There is no fine timber,
but all the edges of the hills are wooded, the hollows
are full of flowers. Throughout the day the northern
horizon is boldly outlined by the hills we have
descended, and to the south ever widening valleys
open towards blue distances that represent the sea.
We left De Aar at two in the morning with a

9o LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vn

sharp frost that made us glad to cower round the
fire in the waiting-room and warm our hands and
feet before the train started. By sunset we are on
a warm level where ostrich farms have become
frequent, and the long-legged birds, disturbed by the
whistle of the train, race the engine and outstrip
our speed with apparently little effort. In the dark
we cross the Addo veldt, where elephants still roam
in a wild state. Port Elizabeth is represented only
by a semicircle of harbour lights round an uncom-
fortably rough sea, and it is afternoon again before
a tug is steaming with us up the Buffalo River to
East London. Three more hours of climbing in
the train take us up to the 1700 feet level upon
which King William's Town stands.

These long and rapid journeys serve to bring the
continent and its varying capacities and conditions
together with a curiously kaleidoscopic effect. When
you begin to count the miles you have traversed by
thousands, you feel that you have at least seen
something of the physical surface and shape of a
country in which a mere handful of Europeans are
laying the foundations of future history, and just as
in the turning of a kaleidoscope there are certain
blue and red spots which always attract the eye
and form the centre of each new combination, so in
this great extent of physical surface which you are
every day looking at from some new point of view
there are certain constant elements which form the
centre of every conceivable combination of its his-
torical development. The blue and red spots of the
South African kaleidoscope, which may change in
their relation to each other and in the effect which
they produce upon the whole, but which must

vii LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 91

remain permanently as the component parts of its
design, are the immense wealth and size of the
country and the various forms of humanity which
have met within its borders. The question of
material development and the question of race are
the two interests round which everything else
revolves.

In the Transvaal, at Kimberley, in the Northern
territory of the Chartered Company, in Bechuana-
land, in Natal, ever since the advent of the railway
in the Free State, material is the subject of daily
talk and daily effort. The opening of means of
communication, the development of mines, the settle-
ment of land are matters of vital and of always
increasing importance. They form the aim of all
practical political politics. But this constructive
work is being carried on over an area of millions of
square miles by the initiative of little more than half
a million of persons.

The entire white population of South Africa,
including the Dutch Republics, amounts to only
620,000. The task that they have undertaken is
nothing less than Titanic, and it is evident that
whatever may be the mental energy, however inex-
haustible the stock of initiative that may have
prompted its conception, actual motive power is still
deficient. South Africa cannot be ploughed from
the Zambesi to the Cape, nor its cities built, nor its
rivers bridged by half a million of hands. Manual
labour, and manual labour in large quantities, is
absolutely essential to success. Labour is, therefore,
rapidly becoming the supreme demand of the white
population.

But the white population is not the only popu-

92 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vn

lation of South Africa. Side by side with this
amount of material development, which seems to
determine the future of the white race, there is also
the question of the future of the black race. A
complete census of natives cannot, of course, be
taken. But their numbers are to be certainly
counted by millions. Within the Cape Colony
and Natal alone they reach nearly 2,000,000.
Throughout the still independent or partially pro-
tected native territories they swarm uncounted, and
there are many districts in which the future of these
wild races and their relation to the South Africa of
coming history is the all-absorbing topic of thought.
Basutoland is one of those districts. King William's
Town, situated as it is in the very heart of a native
population, upon the borders of the Transkei, where
nearly half a million of natives still live under the
rule of their tribal chiefs, and within a day's journey
of barbaric Pondoland, where the ruling chief,
Sigcan, roasted his stepmother the other day, and
habitually fastens offenders against his sovereign
pleasure into ant-heaps to be eaten alive, is another.
Here the hum and bustle of material develop-
ment sounds faintly from the far distant levels 01
the High Veldt, and the native question is all im-
portant. And as in the Transvaal, as in Basuto-
land, so here the outcome of all serious thought
upon the subject appears to be the conclusion that
the two great problems of South Africa ought to
solve each other, that the difficulty which hampers
the question of material development and the diffi-
culty which stands in the way of the satisfactory
progress of the native races are in truth one and the
same, that both would be removed and the successful

vii LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 93

future of South Africa assured if any system or
process could be devised by which the average raw
native could be converted into an effective labourer.

Already, as I have said, in Basutoland the desire
to convert the native into a labourer is uniting the
endeavours of the missionaries and the officers
charged with the duties of administration. The
chiefs have been induced to appreciate the solid
advantages which result both to themselves and to
their people, and the effect has been eminently satis-
factory. Not only is the whole Basuto nation at
work within its own frontiers, but as the land is
more and more taken up it sends increasing numbers
of labourers out to the mining centres in which
labour is in demand. Fifty or sixty thousand,
which is the number of passes granted every year to
natives going across the frontier to work, is not a
bad percentage upon a population of 2 1 7,000.

When the position of which Basutoland offers at
present only a small practical illustration can be
repeated in some of its essential particulars through-
out South Africa, and philanthropists, practical poli-
ticians, and native leaders unite heartily in the
endeavour to induce the native masses to become
labouring masses, it can be scarcely doubtful that
some sort of similar success will be achieved. There
are signs that this condition of things is by the force
of circumstances likely to be brought about. The
hard-and-fast line which used to exist between the
missionary and the politician, the negrophobist, and
the practical business man, is disappearing. It is
becoming apparent that the same object may legiti-
mately enlist all their efforts.

The composition of the present Government of

94 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vn

the Cape, including, as it does, men of the negro-
phobist traditions of Mr. Rose Innes and Mr. Sauer
and a number of the Africander Bond, with such
moving spirits of material development as Mr.
Rhodes and Mr. Sivewright, is something more than
an accident. It is almost an inevitable outcome of
the convergence of public thought. It is certainly
typical of the various sides from which the next
great question with which the country will be called
upon to deal may be approached. There is little
doubt that this question is the labour question. The
passing of the franchise measure has prepared the
way for it ; the still more difficult question of liquor
remains to be dealt with. Behind them both lies
the object which some people think cannot be
touched by legislation — namely, the distribution of
native labour through those parts of the colony or
the continent in which it is most required.

At present about four-fifths of the native popula-
tion of the colony are collected in the eastern
district and the native territories which neighbour
upon it. The Fingoes number about a quarter of a
million. The Transkei and the territories of Griqua-
land East, Tembuland, etc., contain about another
half-million. Basutoland has not far from a quarter
of a million. The district of King William's Town
alone contains more than 70,000 natives. Deduct
all these from the million and a quarter which the
census gave to the whole colony, and it will be seen
in how large a proportion they cluster round this
neighbourhood. It is not that in this part of the
colony there is most work for them to do. Quite
the contrary. The industrial and agricultural centres
are at Kimberley and in the Western district. But

vii LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 95

here are their locations and reserves. There, if
they wish to live, they must work. Here, the
incentive to work has been taken from them.
Food and shelter in perpetuity have been assured
to them.

In the territories which have been annexed since
1875 there is a total area of something like 14,000
square miles, which in its moral effect upon the native
population may be compared to a gigantic pauper
asylum. Within the limits of a location or reserve
no native who has a wife need work, nor need he
fear to starve. The principle of the location is that
the land is owned by the community and is inalien-
able. It is cultivated by the women, and the man
who owns women has consequently a provision of
land and labour of which he cannot be deprived.
It is entirely unaffected by his own conduct, and the
principle of individual responsibility, upon which the
framework of civilised society rests, is non-existent.
The ordinary equipment of the raw Kaffir is a
blanket, which he brings to a very picturesque tint
of terra-cotta by braying it with powdered red ochre.
He may add a few blue and white beads by way of
decoration, but he needs no further wearing apparel
nor sleeping accommodation. Wrapped in his
blanket, he is to be seen sitting in the sun in all the
locations of the Eastern district. His wives sow
and reap and grind and cook the maize upon which
he lives. He has not learned to care for luxuries,
his necessaries are all provided. Why, in the name
of common sense, he may well ask, should he work ?
We have heard a great deal at home about the
pauperisation of the working classes. Curiously, it
does not yet seem to have been realised by the

96 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vn

friends of the native on what a vast scale it has been
practised here.

The well-intentioned philanthropy which has
assured to every individual native an inalienable
share in the property of his tribe has, it is true,
saved South Africa from the existence of a class
whose material wants are unprovided for, but it has
done so at the cost of the permanent degradation of
the native race. All impulse to personal effort has
been removed. The situation which has been
created is entirely artificial, for, in a savage state, the
man was obliged to defend by force the possessions
in which the stronger powers of civilisation now
maintain him. While his women worked he fought,
and, if the conditions of his existence were not ideal,
they called at least for natural exertion. In his
actual condition he is an excrescence upon creation,
useful to no one, and least of all to himself. His
friends still endeavour to repair with one hand what
has been destroyed with the other. Having deprived
him of the initial incentive which is embodied in our
own harsh, wholesome doctrine that the man who
does not work shall not eat, they hope to coax him
into the way he should go by inspiring him with
more complicated needs.

The difficulty, it is often said, is that the native
has no wants. If we could give him wants he
would work to satisfy them. This is the object of
the most enlightened missionary efforts, and to
some extent it has been successfully attained. A
class of native who is distinguished from his less
enlightened brethren by the title of School Kaffir
has been brought into existence. The School Kaffir
can read and write, can wear European dress, and

vii LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 97

acquires a taste for European habits which leads
him in many instances to work. Domestic servants
and labourers come largely from this class, and it
forms an element which, in spite of many faults
and the general disrepute which is sure to attend an
artificially educated section of any people, is not to
be despised. But at present the School Kaffir is a
creature apart, and it happens often enough that the
distance which has been placed by education between
him and his fellows is too great to be maintained,
and by a not unnatural reaction he falls back
entirely to the level from which he started. Some
people attribute this to a misdirection of educating
effort, and are of opinion that the endeavour to
make a skilled native artisan is as much out of
place as the endeavour to make learned native
professors.

There is no general demand in the colony nor
among the natives themselves for artisans. All that
is wanted and that will be wanted for a long time
to come is labourers, grooms, gardeners, ploughmen,
miners, porters, men willing to use their muscles
and submit to the discipline of daily exertion. Any-
thing finer than this, it is urged, will not be wanted
and will not be paid for. Consequently, it will fall
under the practically inoperative head of the dis-
used accomplishment. An instance in point falls
under my eyes here, in the person of a native who
holds a position in the service of the Woods and
Forests. He was educated at Lowedale, and is, I
am told, an accomplished cabinetmaker. He has a
hut and a bit of ground out in the bush. He wears
a blanket, has two or three wives, and to the best
belief of his superior officer never does a day's work

H

98 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vn

from year's end to year's end. Nobody in his
world wanted cabinets, he did not care for them
himself, and he prefers to draw pay for the labour
of his wives. I mention the case because it has a
typical value.

If it were possible by education to instil a taste
for luxuries into a people already possessed of the
necessaries of life, the work of refining and develop-
ing the race would only be a question of time. But,
when we take into account the frequent lapses of
this kind which occur, it seems to be a matter of
grave doubt whether the best meant efforts can do
more than touch the fringe of the whole matter, as
long as the first inward spur to action which rests
upon the hard groundwork of necessity is absent.
This view is further supported by the fact that,
when for any reason crops fail and supplies in the
locations become scanty, labour becomes at once
plentiful in the surrounding neighbourhood. It is
only employers who live in a district surrounded on
all sides by locations that are able to note the
immediate fluctuations of the labour barometer.

In times of plenty in the locations a cook may
not be scolded, a groom may not be kept out at
night, a gardener may not be asked to cut an extra
supply of vegetables, without fear of finding that the
domestic in question prefers a return to the location
to further service. In times of scarcity good manners
and attentive performance of duties may be expected.
But, though the effect of the condition of the loca-
tion upon the supply of labour is more immediately
noticed here, it none the less makes itself felt
throughout South Africa, and it is now coming to
be generally admitted that the existence of the

vii LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 99

location is the primary cause of the deficiency in the
supply of native labour.

There are, however, some other recognised causes
which it is well not to lose sight of. Among these
is the not altogether surprising fact that, while many
would-be employers complain of being unable to
obtain labour, their real trouble is not that they can-
not get labour but that they cannot get it at their
own price.

Farmers want a compulsory labour law in order
that they may be sure of a cheap as well as of a
plentiful labour supply. The wages which they
offer in this neighbourhood vary from 5 s. to 15 s. a
month with food, and this is not enough. Natives will
not leave the location to take it. It is vain to say
that the amount of wages makes no difference, that
the native is inherently lazy and that nothing but
force will compel him to work. Force is a very
different thing from natural necessity, and the
difference between the operation of the one and the
other is all the difference between a race of workmen
and a race of slaves. Failing necessity, superior in-
ducement is the only resource, and that this will act
even under present conditions is demonstrated by
the evidence of Kimberley, Johannesburg, and
Basutoland. In all these places the native has
shown not only that he can work, but that he will
work, if for any reason it becomes worth his while.
Up to this point there is not one of us who is not
essentially lazy.

The native only follows a human law, and it can-
not be too soon or too clearly recognised that any
hopes of obtaining labour from him at a price lower
than that which he chooses to set upon it are hopes

ioo LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vn

which mean nothing less than slavery in disguise, and
are foredoomed to disappointment. To endeavour
to compel him to work by means of an increased
taxation is also a mere tinkering at the question,
which is not likely to produce much impression.
Fair wages, which, as long as he works only for
luxuries, will necessarily be high wages — and, it is
regrettable to be obliged to add, faithful observance
of the terms of agreement — combined, perhaps, with
some modification of the existing Masters and Ser-
vants Act, appear to represent the best that can be
done while the present system of locations and tribal
tenure of land remains in force.

The experience of Kimberley, Johannesburg,
Basutoland, Khama's country, and Natal — in fact all
experience of any value — would add to these a pre-
ventive liquor law. But when all this has been done
the fundamental question will still remain to be
faced. Is it necessary, or wise, or right to continue
a system of land tenure which puts natives outside
the operation of the natural impulse to work for a
living, and deprives them at the same time of the
dignified sense of individual responsibility? The
difficulties in the way of abolishing such a system
are, of course, many and great. How they could
best be met must be a question for experts. The
fairer principle would seem to be to proceed by some
gradual system of survey and allotment into indi-
vidual freehold.

The idea that the native cannot understand the
system of freehold is exploded by the experience of
Natal, where natives are becoming in increasing
quantities freeholders of land purchased from the
Crown. In Natal it is held that the practice of

vii LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 101

monogamy follows the plough — that is to say, that a
more enlightened system of agriculture has a tend-
ency to do away with the plurality of wives, who,
under the old system, represent little more than farm
labourers. However this may be, there is no doubt
that the issue of individual title in the locations, if
such a thing were by any means feasible, would
greatly facilitate the advance of civilisation and the
abolition of old and savage customs, among which
polygamy ranks, perhaps, as one of the least harm-
ful. Unquestionably one result of the issue of in-
dividual title would be that many natives would part
with their land. This would be far from an unmixed
evil. In the first place, those who did so would be
henceforth dependent upon their own exertions, and
consequently of necessity labourers. In the second
place, the mass of the native locations would be by
degrees broken up, and the million or so of natives
who now congregate in this part of South Africa
would be little by little distributed throughout the
colonies and States, and thus become more easily
absorbed in the natural channels of labour and
civilisation.

The probable tendency of such a distribution
would be towards the centres of material develop-
ment where they are needed. Thus, while com-
petition lessened the price of labour, a larger number
of labourers would be employed, and the material
basis of South African prosperity might be laid by
native hands, for the mutual benefit and advance-
ment of black and white races alike. Liquor and
land, it has been truly said, constitute the two great
elements of the native question. Add labour to
these, and it must be admitted that the result is a

io2 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vn

trinity of the most difficult subjects with which
modern legislation is called upon to deal. When
they have been dealt with here, the South African
race question will have disappeared, and it is not the
least interesting part of the in many respects unique
problem which it presents, that it should thus involve
a settlement under its own conditions of the same
questions which are perplexing all the world.

VIII

PlETERMARITZBURG, NATAL.

The coast journey from East London to Natal is
generally rough enough for bad sailors to be glad to
salve their pride with the, I imagine, seldom varying
assurance that the trip is one of the very worst
which falls within the long experience of the captain ;
but it has the advantage of being all the time within
sight of land, so that while the hours of daylight
last there is at least the diversion of studying the
shore.

Pondoland, with its hills and woods and waterfalls,
takes up the greater part of a day. There is
scarcely a harbour along the inhospitable line into,
which even a small boat can enter. The rivers flow
from the mountains of the interior across ground
which is still high when it reaches the sea, and they
fall over the cliffs edge in waterfalls that in the
rainy season become magnificent. Only a few have
already cut their channels down into gorges through
the rock. Among these is the St. John's, which is
navigable for vessels of small draught at the mouth,
and of which the gates, as they are called, form the
picturesque show spot of the coast. They are simply
the two sides of a table-mountain, over the edge of
which the river may once have fallen, as the smaller

104 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vm

rivers still fall on either hand. It is now cleft from
the summit to the base, and the river flows out
naturally through a wooded valley to the sea-level.
It is a little port of civilisation which was annexed
by the Cape Government, it may be remembered,
about eight years ago. But for it and the eight-mile
strip on either bank of the river which belongs to it,
the barbarism of Pondoland is unbroken. Over the
three or four thousand square miles of territory of
which it is composed, the rule of the savage is still
supreme.

The stories of cruelty perpetrated by command of
the chiefs, which are from time to time carried over
the border, are sickening in their atrocity, and you
wonder, as your glass sweeps the shore, what scenes
of horror its beauty hides. Lying, as Pondoland
does, like a wedge of savagery between the civilised
borders of the Cape Colony and Natal, its annexation
can be merely a question of time ; and as Natal has
already a sufficiently extensive native area to occupy
her energies in Zululand, it is more than probable
that the Cape Colony will before long deal with the
question. The sooner it does so the better, will be
the general opinion.

If it incorporates Pondoland absolutely with its
own territory, its frontier will then be conterminous
with the frontier of Natal ; and the reasons which
are strong already for the friendly co-operation of
the two English colonies in the settlement of South
African questions will be by so much the stronger.
That they ought to co-operate is one of the self-
evident facts which the more liberal-minded public
men of both colonies do not dispute. At the same
time, it is unfortunately no less evident that on

viii LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 105

every question of South African interest with which
both are concerned they stand at present opposed.
It is difficult for the smaller colony to pardon the
exercise of strength and energy by which the Cape
has, as it were, stretched its limbs across the peninsula,
and laid hands upon the Transvaal trade.

Natal is before all things a trading community,
and the trade of the Transvaal and a portion of
the Free State seemed only a few years ago to be
hers of right for ever. Now it is flowing from her
down the easy channel of the Cape and Free
State Railway, and when she is invited to enter
into a railway union it is not unnatural that she
should feel a little sore at being asked to divide
profits which she had speculated upon as all her
own. The bitter part of the position is that, how-
ever pluckily she may compete, she has no choice.
The most logical exposition of her natural rights
goes down before the still harder logic of facts.
The Cape Railway is in Johannesburg, or will be
before many weeks have passed, whereas the Natal
extension is still stationary on the Transvaal border,
waiting for permission to come on. Every week
that passes makes the position worse, for the habit
of trading through Port Elizabeth gains ground.
The authorities of Natal agree with the authorities
of the Cape on the general theory that to come to
an understanding with each other and fix a tariff
which will enable both railway systems to run
at a profit is better than to continue a cut -throat
competition which must injure both, even though
it should stop short of ruining one. The difficulty
in the present sore state of feeling is to fix upon
a practical basis for the tariff. The mileage of the

106 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vm

Natal lines to Johannesburg and Pretoria, supposing
them finished, would be so much less than the mile-
age of the Cape lines that, if the charge for the
carriage of goods were fixed on a basis of so much
per mile, Natal would have an immense advantage
over the Cape. She claims for herself that she
has a right to this advantage, which comes from her
geographical position.

The Cape, on the other hand, contends that
what is gained geographically is lost topographi-
cally, and that the expense of construction and
working upon a line of which the ruling gradient
is i in 30 is so great that, if the two railway
systems were run on strictly commercial principles,
it would be found that the Cape line could afford
to carry goods at a- lower rate from point to point
than the Natal line could do. The desire of the
Cape is, therefore, for a tariff fixed on a point-to-
point basis. But if the point-to-point charge were
equal, Natal trade would be altogether ruined, for
the greater nearness of the Cape ports to Europe
and America would give an advantage to the Cape
against which there would be no competition.

Natal cannot evidently accept an arrangement
which means ruin to herself. The union tariff, if
there is one, must be fixed on a compromise
between these two extremes. Natal must have
some allowance made for her natural advantage
in having about 200 miles less of road to run ;
the Cape must have some allowance for the geo-
graphical position of her ports and the topographical
advantages of her railway road. What this allow-
ance should be on either side must be a matter of
discussion. It has been suggested to pool the

viii LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 107

railways and divide the profits. This might be
satisfactory from the point of view of the Govern-
ments concerned, but it would not satisfy the local
demands of the various ports, nor simplify the dis-
cussion of interests to any appreciable extent.

The difficulty in approaching the discussion
would be less if the two colonies were in other
respects in an equal position ; but here again the
facts are merciless. The Cape is the premier State
of South Africa. It is larger, stronger, richer, and
more populous than Natal. Its resources are more
varied, and it gains every day the increased impetus
in development which comes of successful progress.
It is useless to endeavour to escape from the
inevitable, and the wise policy for the smaller
colony would seem to be to acknowledge in a
loyal and friendly spirit the supremacy which cannot
be denied. But Natal is unable to accept this
position.

The feeling here is that the Cape misuses its
strength for the purpose of crushing and oppressing
its weaker neighbours, and that the only hope of
obtaining a fair bargain is to be in a position to
extort it. There is, consequently, a much greater
inclination towards alliance with the Republics
against the dominant power than there is towards
alliance with the other English colony, and, with the
hope before it of obtaining advantageous concessions
from the Transvaal, Natal is not disposed at present
to discuss the question of Railway Union on amicable
terms. There is a confident belief that the survey
which has been voted by the Volksraad for the
extention of the Natal line from Charlestown will
very shortly be followed by the construction of the

108 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vm

line, and it is held that when this is done Natal will
be able to treat on a more equal footing as regards
railway matters with the Cape.

It is needless to say that the Transvaal draws its
own advantage from the situation and is not anxious
to contribute in any way to the soothing of colonial
susceptibilities. The position with regard to Customs
Union has much the same admixture of fact and
feeling. The Cape and Free State have entered
into a Customs Union, which is without doubt very
advantageous to the Free State. The Free State,
having no port of its own, was dependent, before it
entered into the Customs Union, upon the tariff of
its neighbours. If the Cape imposed a duty of
1 2 per cent, goods which came through Cape
ports paid 1 2 per cent. If the duty of Natal was
5 per cent, goods which came through the ports of
Natal paid 5 per cent. In neither case did the
Government of the Free State receive anything, and
it was natural that the importer who had to pay the
dues preferred goods which came by way of Natal.
Natal had fair reason to look upon the Free State
trade as an increasing quantity in her future. But
here again the Cape stepped in and narrowed the
field. By the agreement of the Customs Union the
Free State accepts the duties of the Cape, imposes
them upon all its borders, and receives in return a
three-quarters share from the Cape Customs of all
the duties levied on Free State goods. This amounts,
in round numbers, to about ^100,000 a year.
Natal goods going up pay first their own duty at
the port, then the Customs Union duty on the
frontier. Instead of benefit, they suffer considerable
disadvantage, and, as with the Transvaal, so with

vni LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 109

the Free State, force of circumstances is driving
Natal trade to the Cape.

Again the Cape offers an agreement. Enter, it
says, into our Customs Union, and again Natal
refuses to act under compulsion. The average
Customs dues collected within the Union, taking
rateable and ad valorem articles together, is found
to be about 17 per cent. The same average taken
for Natal gives 8 per cent. To enter the Customs
Union at present would mean for Natal something
slightly more than doubling its present duties. In
addition to this, Natal politicians object to the
principle of, as they express it, taxing bread and
letting brandy go free. If they consented to enter
a Customs Union at all, it would be on condition
that the average duty was lowered, and that neces-
saries of life should be, as far as ■ possible, untaxed.
At present, moreover, the condition of inter-colonial
free trade, which accompanies Customs Union, is of
comparatively little value to Natal, for the freedom
is to obtain only over conterminous land frontiers
and will not apply to colonial goods carried by sea.

The principal product which Natal has to offer
to South Africa is sugar. If it enters a Cape port
by sea it can do so only on the same terms as the
sugar of Mauritius. To send it overland is too
expensive. Tea, again, if it goes by sea, competes
with Ceylon and must have no better terms. Briefly,
as matters stand, Natal would, in its own opinion,
suffer the disadvantages of Customs Union, and gain
no corresponding benefit. It is not yet strong
enough, it thinks, to enter the Union with the pro-
spect of exerting sufficient influence to modify the
conditions to which it objects, and it prefers to

no LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vm

strengthen its hand in its own way by co-operation
with the Transvaal. It has lost its advantage in
the Free State trade because the Free State has
entered the Union, but the Transvaal has not entered
the Union, and until it does Natal hopes to keep a
certain advantage in the Transvaal. The advantage
is not very great, for the Cape gives a rebate to
Transvaal goods in bond, which brings their duty
down to the Natal rate. The difference applies
chiefly to the sorted-up trade. This in the nature
of things cannot benefit by rebate, and a great deal
is at present done with Natal, bringing perhaps
other trade in its train.

The danger of the situation is apparent. Natal
stands in isolation from the Cape and Free State
and trusts to the friendship of the Northern Republic.
But President Kruger is bound to consider his own
interests, and the day which sees some exciting
causes of friction removed between him and the
larger colony is not unlikely to see him also frankly
espouse the views of the Cape in relation to South
African politics. He may find himself constrained
to abandon his present attitude of coquetting with
Natal. He may refuse to encourage the extension
of the railway from Charlestown. He may, as he is
pledged to do in the event of the Transvaal's obtain-
ing Swaziland and a port, bring the Republic into
the Customs Union, in which case Natal would stand
entirely alone. Or, as his own new tariff suggests, he
may put so fierce a protective barrier round his
borders as to drive all external trade to the same
distance. In any of these events the position of
Natal becomes extremely precarious. It is impossible
that she should ignore the peril, and it is with a view

viii LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA in

to steadying her foothold and carrying her safely
through any crisis which may be before her, that the
more active spirits among her public men are desirous
of obtaining for her all the liberties and the power
of responsible government. They think she has been
hampered in her dealings with the neighbouring
States by the inequality of her position. The neigh-
bouring States are self-governing ; she is not. They
are responsible for their actions ; she is in tutelage
still. In difficult circumstances it may happen that
Natal, small as she is, is under the government of a
minority, and the other South African Governments,
knowing that her public men are unable to enforce
the expression of their views, treat them with a
disdain which is humiliating.

These circumstances have, it is thought, paralysed
her action and weakened her decisions at critical
moments, and the men who have developed her trade
and built her railways and created her towns claim
for themselves that they are as well able to take the
management of political as of municipal affairs.
They contend that they know their own interests,
and can conduct their own negotiations concerning
them better than any paternal Government. More
than this, they claim that if mistakes are made they
will suffer more willingly for mistakes of which they
have the full responsibility than they can suffer for
the mistakes of other people. In other words, they
feel themselves to be fully grown, and the state of
prolonged childhood is increasingly irksome. The
colony refuses to deal with each individual point
now under discussion until it holds a stronger posi-
tion with regard to each. The desire for responsible
government springs from a belief that in obtaining it

ii2 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vm

the whole colonial position will be strengthened from
root to branch.

Against this view there are many and not trifling
objections. In the first place, there is, of course, the
native question. The natives of Natal are numerically
as ten to one of the white population. To ask for
entire control of this immense mass is to ask for
something which affects the well-being not only of
Natal, but of all South Africa. It is not, therefore,
to be wondered at that the Imperial Government
should have thought it desirable to reserve the con-
trol of native affairs in its own hands. That it has
done so has nevertheless weakened the chance of
responsible government being carried at the elections
by that substantial majority which is required. There
are many advocates of the change, especially among
the up-country Dutch voters, who are not inclined to
consider that half a loaf is better than no bread, and
who will reject it if hampered by this condition.
They hardly give weight enough to the fact that if,
as would undoubtedly be the case, the Imperial
Government would have to bear the brunt of any
trouble arising out of native mismanagement it is
but just that it should keep a preponderating voice
in the management ; and, without considering that
they have not so far had much to complain of in the
Imperial administration of that section of their affairs,
they join their voices to those of other opponents of
the change, who, looking at the matter from an
exactly opposite point of view, fear the withdrawal
of the Imperial troops.

There can be no question that a colony which
desires the comparative independence of responsible
government must be prepared to provide for the

viii LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 113

maintenance of order within its own borders. If it
cannot do this, the responsibility which it proposes
to assume is simply the right to act as it pleases at
some one else's expense. Without touching the
question of external defence, there are men who
think that the peace and order which at present
distinguish the native population would not be
maintained without the symbol of authority which is
embodied in the red coat and the musket. They do
not anticipate that the musket will be ever used, but
they think that its presence is required. Men who
hold this view will not accept a scheme of responsible
government which makes no definite provision for
the continuance of an Imperial garrison in the
colony. Others, from a less worthy motive, object
to see the troops withdrawn because their presence
means the outlay of a certain amount of money.

The vote of Pietermaritzburg, where the troop
money is mainly spent, will, it is supposed, be
almost unanimously given against the change.
Durban will, on the contrary, vote with equal
unanimity in favour of it. Besides the counter-
balancing fears with regard to native questions and
the troops, there is the doubt, always felt in small
communities, of whether there are a sufficient
number of men free to give their energies to politics
to form both a Ministry and an Opposition. The
position of Natal, which is so far from lying
absolutely smooth before her, is one in which care-
less or inefficient administration of her finances
might bring about serious disaster, and in the party
which is opposed to responsible government there
exists some grave apprehension on this head. At
Durban, however, I found business men, who would,

I

H4 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vm

I imagine, be among the first to suffer in such a
contingency, very confident that there was no ground
for the fear. In their view, the introduction of
responsible government will bring the best men in
the colony into politics, and they see no reason to
doubt that the same ability which has built up the
trade of Natal will know how to protect the situa-
tion which has been created.

Apart from the native question, the interests of
Natal are entirely commercial and agricultural, and
when her merchants point to Durban and its sur-
roundings and claim that, having created and
organised these, they have proved themselves
capable of administering their own affairs, it is
impossible to deny that they have some justification.

The struggle for responsible government will be
closely fought. Its most sincere supporters are not
confident of the issue, for they recognise the weight
of some of the practical objections which are urged
against it They believe that if they win they will
greatly strengthen the position of Natal among
South African States, and this is a result which, no
matter how it is brought about, may be honestly
welcomed on all sides.

The rivalry which exists at present between the
two English colonies is not wholesome, because it is
too unequal. The feeling in Natal is too bitter.
The feeling in the Cape is too contemptuous. There
is no more reason for one sentiment than for the
other, and both are, in the best interests of South
Africa, to be regretted. Natal and the Cape Colony
ought to work hand in hand. They would soon
find, if they could agree to do so, that they have
both everything to gain ; for the development of the

vni LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA 115

interior, which they would agree to further, is as
much to the advantage of the one as of the other.
The hindrance to this agreement lies, so far as a
stranger is able to see, much more in the weakness
of Natal than in the strength — even though that
strength be sometimes overbearing — of the Cape.
No doubt the bigger colony is inclined to be imperi-
ous, and to put the wishes and interests of its own
electorate before every other consideration. This is
only to be expected, in view of human imperfection.
But, if Natal could rid itself of over-sensitiveness in
the matter, and consider the questions with which
the two colonies are mutually concerned fairly and
practically upon their own basis, it would probably
find that it has much more to gain by accepting a
reasonable compromise than by standing aloof in its
present attitude of rigid opposition.

If the change from representative to responsible
government were to have no other effect than that
of softening the asperity of local sentiment, and in-
spiring the leaders of public opinion in Natal with
an easier sense of the dignity and security of their
own position, it would, for this reason alone, be worth
an effort to secure. Practical objections may prove
overwhelming. On general grounds everything which
tends to raise the position of Natal, and to place her
on terms of equality with the other Governments of
South Africa, is in itself desirable.

It is impossible to travel through this lovely and
fertile corner of the Continent without recognising
in it an epitome of the two main interests of South
Africa. Material development and the race question
are here laid out, as it were, visibly side by side, so
close one to the other that each throws the other into

n6 LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA vm

relief. The train journey from Durban to Maritz-
burg, lying all the way through fruit gardens and
farms, and rising so steeply that without putting
your head out of the window you see the engine
constantly on the opposite sweep of a curve before
you, presents a typical picture of what European
energy can achieve.

On the coast the town of Durban is one of which
any small population might be justly proud. But,
as you mount in the course of the same train journey
to the higher levels and obtain a magnificent and
commanding view of the surrounding country, you
realise that the towns and the train and the richly
cultivated land on either side form only a strip of
civilised development which is drawn like a riband
across an area of native wildness. Kaffirs swarm
visibly on every side, and their presence forces on
your comprehension the fact that they occupy the
country in an immense numerical majority to the
white population. The features of the position are
slightly accentuated here, but this is in fact the posi-
tion of South Africa as a whole. Like Natal, it is
crossed by lines and currents of civilisation. Like
Natal, it possesses still wide areas untouched by
development. Like Natal, its native population
greatly outnumbers the governing body of Euro-
peans. The problems of the parts are the problems
of the whole, and there is so complete an identity of
interests that there is everything to gain from co-
operation. Co-operation, in fact, is the master word
of South African politics.

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

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